


The Sun Isn't Supposed To Go Out

by loveandwarandmagick



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Enemies to Lovers, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mental Health Issues, POV Third Person, Pining, Slow Burn, SnowBaz, Some divergence, Watford (Simon Snow), baz is very sad, but not enough, it has a lot, it's basically canon but with more angst, so is simon, the mage is a dick, why is there a character tag for the numpties akdskl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24053785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandwarandmagick/pseuds/loveandwarandmagick
Summary: "He watches Simon stare blankly at the board, and understands exactly what it means for a star to burn out."orSimon's just a boy with the world on his shoulders, and Baz knows that weight all too well.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 16
Kudos: 80





	The Sun Isn't Supposed To Go Out

**Author's Note:**

> \- some dialogue is taken directly from the book / all credits to rainbow rowell - 
> 
> okay, fair warning. this is slightly heavy stuff. originally, it was going to be a shorter piece about simon's mental health through the years - because surely, his trauma didn't affect him all at once. from there, the idea spiraled and it became more about baz's mental health, and how he sees simon. that being said; the forest scene was not a complete overreaction, there had to have been a precursor there. which is where the heavy stuff comes in.
> 
> tw: thoughts of death, suicide, handling of depression, traumatic events, etc.   
> (if i missed any triggers, please let me know)

_**1st Year** _

  
He’s heard the story a million different ways. His mother tells him a bedtime story about the greatest mage, laughing roughly at the sound of his father’s grumbling against it.

“Hush Malcom, it’s only a story. Basil wants to hear it.”

“That man is an idiot and so is his prophecy,” his father says as he leaves the room, but not before sighing and leaning over to his wife, pressing a delicate hand against her cheek. 

Baz falls asleep with his mother’s rough hand in his, and she falls asleep kneeled on the floor by his bed.

Natasha Grimm-Pitch is gone in an instant, there and then not. Baz is five years old with nothing but a few memories and an aching gap in his chest where there should be more. There are scars on his neck and his father is terrified of what will inevitably become of his son, but mostly just lost. He wanders around the house like he can’t find his way and doesn’t look at his son, not for months. 

When Baz loses his color and his face hollows out, a mixture of losing his mother and his soul, he looks nothing like he used to. He becomes his father’s son at only six years old, tucking himself into silence and the shell of grief his father had hid himself in while the world fell apart around him. They make it through, leaving a pillow on the floor and by his side in bed. Falling asleep just before daylight every night.

His father pretends that his son will be okay and forgets that there is a space to fill. He takes down her pictures, eventually. He remarries, years later, to a woman with a kind smile and unbearably soft hands.

Her name is Daphne, and she's sweet and has a low voice. She smiles like she can’t understand why Baz practices violin for so long that his fingers get calloused. Why, when his magic comes in, a year later; he holds fire in his cupped hands until his palms become rough.

Baz dreams of fire and pain. He discovers nightmares and holds his own hand to his cheek as he cries. There is something missing, but he can't figure out why the lack of memory hurts so much.

When he is eleven, he sits in the kitchen with Fiona, his mother’s sister, who’d already made it very clear that he shouldn’t call her his aunt. 

_“It makes me feel old.”_

She smiles as she says it and it’s like looking into a mirror, for a brief second. Then her face shifts back, passive and she looks like his mother, with wilder eyes. The difference is the angular shape of her face, and the shadows around her features. Gaunt, like grief swallowed her up and sharp, like rage freed her. Baz remembers his father calling her a radical. He agrees; he sees the whole revolution in her eyes when she speaks.

“Simon Snow,” she says to Baz, and grins again, “is The Mage’s new pawn. Part of the whole prophecy.” 

  
He digs his fingers into his knees under the table as she tells him the story he already knows, this time filling in each blank space with someone real. He believes her when she says that he is the most powerful magician in the world, feels it like an echo off of his own magic. He decides to trust her when he realizes she has never once been afraid of him, decides in that second that he’ll do everything she asks in the name of family. He learns not to fear loss, but to fight it with everything in him. 

  
The prophecy calls Simon Snow a savior; Baz’s family calls him a political advantage. He wonders how those two things could possibly look the same, can't quite sync the imagery of a hero and a chess piece.

On the night before school, he thinks about what Simon Snow looks like, instead of what he’s supposed to look like. Baz wonders if he's taller than him, what color his eyes are.

Who his roommate will be, if the Crucible can't tell that he's a vampire, and shouldn't get a roommate at all.

  
When Baz arrives the next morning, there’s magic surrounding him, bouncing off his skin and sticking. Then, all of a sudden, his throat burns, and warmth sits in his chest; a heavy thrum leading him to someone. A bright-eyed kid, wearing clothes that look like they’re falling apart. He’s short, and so skinny that when he sticks a bony hand out to shake Baz’s own, Baz nearly flinches.

  
By the time Baz meets Simon Snow, he’s met him a million times before.

In the same story, told over and over in different ways. The prophecy tells the story of a hero, a magician to rival everyone. There’s raw energy bouncing off of him, so hot that Baz holds back from shaking his hand for as long as possible, irrationally, to keep from burning himself.

  
He knows exactly who he is, but asks anyway. The Mage’s heir keeps his hand extended, bouncing from foot to foot, but Baz refuses to take his hand until he can’t stand the magic steaming in his chest. He finds that Simon’s hand is just as hot as the magic boiling over his edges, but it’s a long while before either of them lets go. Baz, because he wants to be sure of him, that he’s exactly what he looks like, and nothing else. Simon loosens his grip when he does, eyes glancing down at his ruined hands curiously. 

  
Simon Snow doesn’t look like a savior, or like a pawn, or like much of anything at all. He’s lanky and awkward and his blue eyes are darting all over Baz’s face like he’s not sure what to make of him.

Baz wonders briefly, if someone’s already warned Snow about him. If he’s heard anything about who Baz is, what his intentions are. 

  
Out of all the things Fiona mentioned, bright was not one. His eyes shine, practically glow, whether it’s the magic or just him. He seems raw, hungry in a way that Baz has never known. He’s always been full – of magic, of grief that roils over him sometimes, of blood that isn’t his own. When Simon lets go of Baz’s hand, he smiles, just once. Then turns over his shoulder without saying goodbye, back to the outskirt of the crowd. 

  
Baz hates him from the second he walks away, because of all the ways he could have ruined this, he didn’t say bye. It fills Baz with frustration, with rage. 

  
_How do you walk away without saying goodbye? When so many things can happen from here to the next moment?_

  
He doesn’t think that the Mage’s Heir is going to drop dead in the next few minutes. But he doesn’t know much of anything at all. 

  
For the whole first year, Snow proves to be the most incompetent magician at Watford. He causes more harm than good with all his power, and no one scolds him because they know where he came from, and what he is. He’s far from who he’s supposed to be, though, and everyone notices, even if they don’t say anything. He tells Fiona how awful he’s doing in classes when he goes home for Christmas break, and she laughs, loud and bright.

  
“Someone ought to tell _Davy_ that his boy is a miserable excuse for our savior,” she sings, flopping over onto the couch and gasping for breath. 

  
Malcom presses his fingers to his eyes and his wife gently taps the glass in front of Fiona, surreptitiously sliding it towards her own end of the table with a small smile. She glances over at Baz, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder and tilting her head. He takes the hint and slides into bed without another word. Alone, he has time to think. About Snow, about the last day before the break.

  
He didn’t mean for it to happen, but it was bound to, with the way he's been watching him. He only does it to see when he can slip down to the Catacombs and feed without Snow noticing. He’d remained stubbornly awake though, huffing and staring at the ceiling and glancing at Baz, who was irritated and thirsty. His covers scratched over his skin each time he shifted in bed, until he finally snapped.

  
“Crowley, Snow aren’t you tired of watching me sleep? I can feel your eyes on me from here.” 

  
He turned around just in time to see Simon squint at him, sniffing hard.

  
“You can see me? In the dark?” He’d sounded sleepy, but there was something shifting in his tone that made Baz uncomfortable. He sat up, narrowing his eyes at Baz’s bed.

  
“Where do you go every night?” He’d asked. Like it was just that simple. Normal, that Baz left every night, at the same time, like clockwork. Baz had sat up, rolling his neck and ignoring Snow as he threw off his blanket and walked to the door.

  
“None of your business, Snow,” he’d replied, moving to stand in front of him. “Now move.”

  
He’d clenched his stupid jaw, finally squared out from eating too much at every meal, and kept standing by the door, and Baz could’ve bitten him right then. _Should_ have, to stop his maddening inquiry.

“You leave every night,” he’d muttered, sticking out his chin ridiculously, like he was still figuring out what he had to say, “and you always come back before morning.”

“ _Move,_ Simon.”

“ _No,_ Baz.”

He’d grabbed him then, careful not to be too rough, minding the Anathema and his own conscience. 

“I think I know what you are,” he’d whispered, eyes widening when Baz breathed in, hard. He had pushed down until Simon ended up on the floor, blinking up in surprise at how willingly he’d gone down. Or maybe shocked that Baz had done it in the first place.

“You don’t know _anything,_ ” he’d said, shocked and too afraid to turn around. He’d ran down to the Catacombs, like every night, to his mother.

Vampires aren’t allowed into Watford. If Snow got his hands on that information? Baz could very well get expelled, get torched or have a stake driven through his heart. One of the last people to carry his mother’s name, and it’d be disgraced by something he can't even help. He couldn’t let Snow find out, not now. Not ever. 

The second he’d been able to see the stars again, he looked straight to the window at the top of Mummers. Swore, for a second, that Snow was watching him too. 

_**______________**_

There’s a rumor going around when they come back that Simon Snow slayed a dragon at the end of Christmas Break. 

He constantly smells like smoke now, and his magic is blurring the edges of him constantly. His face blurs and shifts around if you look too closely, like he’s trying to hide from himself, or like he can’t bear so many people staring at him all the time. Everyone’s heard of the chosen one, and everyone wants a glimpse of him.

He looks the part of the hero when he stands outside in the sun, when every one of his features catches the light and turns him into something transcendental, untouchable. His face lights up when he smiles and he’s got friends now, so he’s almost always smiling. Baz can’t bear the sight of him, all lit up. It reminds him of flames, of burning alive.

And when Spring comes, Snow goes.

Baz isn’t sure whether The Mage heard all about how awful he’s been doing in his classes, or whether he got the note that Baz slipped into his office, but he’s barely left him alone. He calls Snow out of lectures, shows up in the dining hall and pulls him from every meal. 

He starts getting back to the room later than Baz even, limping with every step. His hands are calloused, Baz notices, from holding a sword too big for him. There are nights when he comes home covered in blood that isn’t his own. One night, he walks in, sword dragging behind him like he can’t hold it up anymore. 

Baz imagines that he might smell like rain and spent magic, smoky and warm, but he can’t smell anything over Snow’s own blood, filling up the room. Baz has to hold his breath until Simon trudges into the bathroom, then turns on his side and lets himself heave dryly. It’s too much – it’s _wrong_. The smell is revolting, and he's bleeding too much for it to be a minor injury. He can feel it burning in the back of his throat, acrid and tinged by sadness. Salt chases the scent; heavy tears and sweat. 

_Was it really the Mage who did this to him? Who let this happen?_

He heaves again at the thought, choking back the noise as he hears Simon start to sob quietly behind the heavy door. There’s nothing he can do, nothing he _should_ do, so he leaves. It’s the last day of term, and summer break’s about to start, but he has no goodbye for Snow anyway. He can always come back for his things later, once he's gone.

_**2nd Year** _

  
Last year ended as quietly as it could’ve having Simon Snow for a roommate. Baz had him for most classes too, which means every day revolved around _The Chosen One_. 

  
He has a lot of time to think about that during the summer. Decides somewhere along the way that he desperately wants to hate him, but can’t at all. There’s just something about him that makes Baz feel useless; some type of desperate. He’s had too much time to think about what that means, that he doesn’t hate him. 

It’s a fixation brought upon by his aunt’s insufferable demands that he spies on him, from the proximity of their rooms, from having to watch him fall asleep every night so he knows when he can leave. It’s an obsession because Simon is impossible to ignore. He exudes light and power, and he’s every bit a hero as he can be, even with his shitty magic. Baz stays in his room all summer, willing away every thought until finally, the week before their second year starts, he realizes he hasn’t thought of Simon Snow at all. 

When Fiona urges him to go back to school a full day early, to “ _check out the chosen one’s things_ ,” he walks in to face Snow crying on his bed. His eyes are closed, a small, watery smile on his face that looks like hope. Baz hates it, keeps replaying the last time he saw him, when his whole body was shaking apart behind the door. The parallel image aches, his whole presence is a constant pain in his chest and he _hates_ it. 

He sneers as he drops his bags, making sure Simon looks straight at him when he throws some random insult, just to let his anger out. The room fills with that smoky scent and as it relaxes him, he feels himself slip further into that awareness that this means _something_. That the smell of Simon's magic makes him relax. That he hates to see him looking so clearly relieved at being back to the place where he last fell apart. 

Simon blusters for a few seconds but gives up before he can respond. He looks small, fragile. He’s lost weight so much weight in only a few months, and there’s a new mole above his eye; another tiny one on the bridge of his nose too. He’s here though, still alive and whole, still scowling at Baz through his tears. And he’s taller now, which means he’s probably grown into his sword, probably won't look too much like a child holding a weapon.

Even though that's exactly what they are. _Children_. Looking at Simon, it's hard to remember sometimes that he's still only a child. He's got all that expectation pinned on him, too many people's hopes. 

But it's easy to tell by looking at his hands, the way his fingers don't wrap around the hilt of his sword yet. No matter what he'll grow up to be; he isn't there yet.

Neither of them are.

Baz puts his things away slowly, before turning back to the bed. Snow's sitting up now, rubbing his cheek absentmindedly and glaring at the floor. 

Baz sneers at him again when Snow looks up to watch him leave. Anywhere is better than the room – it’s easier to ignore him when Baz isn’t suffocating on smoke and magic. As soon as he gets away from the smell of Simon’s magic though, he feels cold.

  
_**______________**_

  
They’re only three weeks into term when The Mage starts huffing about again. He’s chosen all of Snow’s extra courses, managing to squeeze him into the Magical Politics class at the very last second. Their professor – a _pixie_ with bright pink hair – pulls him aside to hand him all the material he’s missed, and offers him the last seat in the back row with a bright grin. She’s heard of him, because everyone has, but she clearly has no idea what he’s like in class.

Simon scowls when he meets Baz’s eye, walking steadily and then dropping down into his seat. He can’t quite hide his flinch when he lands heavily. Baz rolls his eyes, swallowing down his concern and eyes him subtly instead. Only an hour passes before there’s a thump outside the classroom door, and it flies open so harshly that the students gasp.

The Mage, in all his ridiculous green glory, storms in, eyes searching the rows of students carefully. 

“Headmaster, is there something that concerns you?” 

The professor's voice is tight, but her smile stays calm. He squints, eyes brightening when he finds Simon. 

“Sir?”

“Ah good, Simon. I’ll need him to come with me. There’s a problem in the wood again,” he says, not even bothering to take his eyes off of Simon. He winces again when he stands, and walks over to them slowly. The Mage hasn’t even bothered to wait, strolling out without even an apology for interrupting. 

The professor looks a bit stunned, but she just pats his shoulder with a tight smile. “Study the third chapter for next class, alright?” He nods, hand already going to his hip to call for his blade. It materializes in his hand just as he’s shuffling out of the class, just in time for Baz to see that his fingers don’t quite wrap around the handle yet. His heart burns with anger, no matter how hard he tries to get it out of his head.

He skips dinner every night that week, too tired to deal with Bunce’s incessant stare, burning straight at him because Simon’s not sitting across from her to block her eyes. His first friend, and she's been the only one to stick to him like glue, to listen to everything he has to say.

She’s curious, maybe finally heeding his warnings about Baz’s family, about how Baz hates him _that_ much. It feels like guilt, even if he’s done nothing wrong, just because she’s got a face on her like she _knows_.

Bunce thinks that one day, Simon might lose. Her eyes say it. So do her nervous fingers as they twist her ring in circles on her finger.

She meets Baz’s eyes in the library and doesn’t say anything, but it’s a plea and a threat all in one.

_Don’t hurt him._

_No_ , Baz thinks as he watches Simon slide to the floor after another late night. He’s gasping, hands trembling around the hilt of his sword, and bleeding from his knuckles. It takes him five minutes to get his breath back, another eight to get up from the floor.

_I won’t hurt him, I’d never._

But he can’t tell her how bad Simon’s hurting himself without being transparent, and Baz isn't the savior in their room, and he couldn't save Simon even if he tried.

_**Third Year** _

  
Baz is powerless to stop whatever is happening to him. Everything is normal, everything is _fine_ , but it isn’t. He has everything under control and then he’s falling so far that he barely manages to catch himself before the pavement does. 

The Mage has stopped calling upon Simon every night. He starts going to class and it’s all just _fine_ , except Baz is thirteen now and he hasn’t outgrown whatever weird obsession he has with Snow. He tells himself over and over again that it’s _nothing_. 

He tells himself over and over again and never believes it. But it only matters that Simon believes him.

Baz calls him an idiot every time he messes something up in class, which is most times. He watches him bluster and flush and ruin his spells even more, and then blame Baz.

He’ll take it. Anything that Simon is willing to give, even if it’s blame, even if it’s hatred. It’s better than indifference, better than kindness in a crashing plane. 

He feels a lot like that sometimes. Falling from the sky, with nowhere to go.

He threatens Simon with a Viking’s funeral. It’s awful, and he shouldn’t say it. But his family pushes death on him so often, insisting that it’s the only outcome and he’s _tired_ of it.

Tired of The Mage training him to fight The Humdrum, to finally rid the world of the biggest enemy so he can keep his savior in his pocket. On his side, on defense. Across from Baz.

Simon still doesn’t know that one day they’ll fight, probably to the death. Baz dreams of Snow, of a punch to the face that takes him down and knocks him into darkness. It’s a good dream, the pain blossoming into peace as he goes down with blue filling his senses.

When he pictures death at Snow’s hand, it’s bliss.

It’s a hand around his throat, or a fist in his face, but it’s soft, somehow. He thinks of his mother when he imagines death – a hole in his chest, somewhere right above Snow. He’s not sure when the two intertwined, only that it’s the same time of pain. Something he can never have again, and something he’ll never have at all. 

They’re both out of reach, blurry, the way that sad dreams are.

_**4th Year** _

It’s a sad thing to be fourteen and obsessed with death. It’s dangerous to be flammable and obsessed with fire, and to always want to be close to it. Snow, the memories of his mother, cigarettes. 

They all burn in his head, and they all smell of smoke. It’s Baz’s new favorite scent.

Baz has stopped expecting life to be gradual, after his mother, after his feelings for Snow flared up in front of him without warning. He stopped expecting, but it doesn’t quite put out the pain of _suddenly_. 

Somewhere along the way, Agatha Wellbelove catches Snow’s eye, and they are Watford’s next _all of a sudden_ , and Baz’s new waking nightmare.

_“Did you see? Agatha and Simon-”_

_“Yeah they’re just friends. For now, of course - can’t imagine he’d let the opportunity slip though.”_

He skips dinner for another week, even though the room is always empty, and the only trace of Simon is the smell of smoke in the air. After a while, he almost misses snapping at him, anything to keep his mind off of _her_. He hides in the Catacombs and comes back to the room when Simon’s already asleep, skin shining in the light from the open window.

His mind swirls with saccharine poison, the smell of her flowery perfume and the sound of Snow’s laugh.

He thought it’d been painful to watch Snow come back to the room every night, beaten down and covered in blood. He thought there was nothing worse than listening to him sob, too far away to reach even if Baz has been standing right in front of him. But no, he’d been wrong.

There’s nothing that rips him apart more than Simon’s smile. 

Baz is tired of dormancy, of avoiding looking their way. The rumors get louder and he sinks into his mind, further and further to get away from it. He leaves blue eyes and flowers behind, sunlight and heavy magic all falling away. The only thing he holds onto is the smell of smoke, the sight of Simon sleeping in his bed, across from him. Even when he’s in his own bed, miles and miles away, he can smell it.

It takes a night of sleeping alone in his own room before he realizes that it’s the memory of his mother that haunts him, smoke curling in his nose as he drifts to sleep across from a boy that’s started to smell like rotting flowers.

_**5th Year** _

  
Baz has been dead since he was five years old, but he starts to feel it at fifteen.

He thought it’d been awful enough to breathe in all that smoke, and then pick up smoking to keep Snow close even when he couldn’t be. He spends half of his break all made up of passion – anger and obscene fantasies and Simon Snow all wrapped up in a daydream, a hand to his mouth to keep quiet truths from spilling out.

He keeps thinking, and that’s his undoing. Eventually, he’s exhausted everything, and his lines blur back in his room at Hampshire, until he goes from dreaming about Snow every night to dreaming about his mother.

He has all of summer to try and forget them, to shove them both to the bottom of his heart so it doesn’t hurt as much each time he takes a drag from his cigarette. He only manages it once, as he lies in bed with a lifeline pressed to his lips – a full flask as courtesy of his aunt. She’d seen his father scold him for smoking and snuck it into his hand, whispering, “ _Pick your poison better. We need you._ ”

She means, _"don't indulge in the things that will kill you too fast."_

He takes her words and takes drinks and he’s sure that his mother would be appalled, though he can’t pick which aspect of himself would break her heart the most. He can’t control any of the things that make him the weakest – not Snow, not his lack of a soul, not his every obsession and thought.

He goes to take another drink and realizes that the flask is empty, though he doesn’t feel any different at all.

  
_**______________**_

  
Time becomes a syrupy thing and slows Baz down. It’s raining as he comes back to school, and it clouds his head. He hears Fiona speaking, flying too fast down back roads, but everything’s muted except for the endless stream of aching memories in his head. 

“And don’t you even worry about it, kid. I’m working on something, but for now just sit back and forget about the chosen one.”

He holds back a scoff when he processes what she said, wants to laugh until the ugly parts of him break loose and shatter away from him. He wants to tell her that he thinks he’s in love with Simon Snow, and that it’s the least important thing in his life, for the first time in a while.

He’s forgotten what it’s like to love him at all.

There’s not much room to remember the feeling, not with his mother’s ghost in his head, picking apart all his flaws. He knows that their disappointments align well enough for it to be hers, just as much as it’s his own thoughts. He’s the intersection of their shared grievances; a culmination of everything he can think of that she’d hate and everything that makes him weak. He doesn’t have space to harbor his feelings though, no matter how much they tear his heartstrings. 

He does everything he can to follow what Fiona said. He dances around Snow, careful to keep his eyes shut or turned away when he walks in a room. He sits as far away from him in class as he can and chooses the person furthest from him to work in pairs. He stares out the window as Wellbelove walks in to the dining room, leading Snow by the hand like a toddler. Dev asks how he’s been, but he doesn’t know how to answer.

He can barely make sense of it himself. He doesn’t understand how it can start hurting so bad now, when he has nothing to remember her by, not really, and yet. He dug so far to get rid of Snow that he ran into the one thing he can’t dig out. He doesn’t want to get rid of her, not at all. He just wants to get rid of the way her memory hurts; the way he can feel her disappointment climbing up his own throat. 

Baz eventually figures out that Snow doesn’t like being ignored, and that it makes him more suspicious than he’s ever been. He’s insistent, and Baz finds himself having to walk faster until he hears Snow’s footsteps fade behind him. He leaves things behind – fingerprints in the dust on the walls, a rat or two in a pile on the floor of the Chapel, just to keep him coming back. It makes him feel normal, at least somewhat, to have this.

His repulsion, his hopeless heroism, his unwavering attention. If those are the only pieces of Simon Snow that he’ll ever have, he’ll keep them close until he can’t anymore.

Baz is running – from his memories, from Snow. _Out of time_ , he thinks, as Simon steps into view. 

He was being slower than usual, tired of playing cat and mouse. Tired of everything. Or maybe the alcohol slowed him down. He doesn’t quite know, too focused on the way Snow has his sword drawn from the moment he speaks. 

“You found me,” Baz says, but his voice sounds horribly flat. Simon finally meets his eyes.

“I knew I would,” is what he says; a hero down to his very bones. Baz feels a laugh rise up in him, but he holds it back. He wants to say, _“kill me, then”_ or _“have you ever wondered what it’s like to kiss a boy”_ or _“do you miss your parents even if it’s been years? even if you have no memory of them?”_

Instead he asks, “Now what?” Because he wants this to be over and he’s tired of poking a live bomb.

“Now you tell me what you’re up to.” 

Baz can’t hold in his laughter anymore, and he slumps over against the wall, ignoring the stares of the skulls around him. _“One of these should have been mine,_ ” he almost says. He doesn’t. Laughter threatens to knock him over again when Snow spreads his legs wider – a battle stance against the unarmed boy on the floor. Like he can’t tell that Baz is too busy fighting for peace to fight back. 

He doesn’t realize he’s speaking until Simon asks “who?” in response.

He raises an arm to gesture at all the bones around him and smiles as Simon flinches back. _Stupid boy_ , he thinks. Baz doesn’t have the energy to keep his walls up so he doesn’t.

He lets his mouth spill and watches Snow get angrier as he dodges direct answers. 

He doesn’t want to die, at least not right now, so he twists his words into riddles, turns them into incomprehensible sentences.

Simon says something ridiculous about tracking down a plague and he’s answering without thinking, staring at his mouth and feeling, so much more deeply for him than he has in months. The normalcy of his overwhelming feelings for him are so abrupt that it pulls a song from his throat, before he even realizes that he's singing, before he can care at all.

He sings that old nursery rhyme from the plague times, staring straight at Snow’s flushed face when he sings the line _pocket full of posies_.

It’s like he’s pulling himself out from the back of Baz’s mind, standing right in front of him, being ridiculous and knocking things over with his stupid sword. The hilt still barely fits in his hand, even now that they’re fifteen and Simon’s killed too many things to count.

_I could kiss him_ , he thinks, and stands. _He’d kill me_ , follows the thought, and he steps closer. His heart snags on either option; both infinitely peaceful. His mouth moves carelessly, eyes flicking all over Snow’s face like he can afford to let his defenses down. 

“I know what you are,” he snarls, and Baz nearly laughs when their eyes meet.

“Your roommate?”

Simon shakes his head, ridiculously, beautifully. Baz wants to choke the life out of him, wants to run himself into the blade in his hand until their anger combusts into something, _anything_ else. He’s angry and so tired of being stagnant. Tired of feeling his mother pull shades over him, soaking him in grey.

Of Wellbelove pouring lighter fluid on the boy made of fire, as if Baz isn't the one burning the quickest.

“Tell me,” he says, because he has nothing to lose anymore. 

“Vampire!” 

Baz laughs this time, grabbing his flask and pulling from it just to catch the weight of the truth, and he sits back into his corner, careful not to disturb the bones. 

He’s speaking, he knows it, but he can't hear himself anymore. Just closes his eyes and rambles on, until he catches Simon’s voice, reminding him of what he can do now that he knows. Baz winces, more at how his voice has gone quiet than at what he’s saying. He responds, but doesn’t quite realize what he’s said. Time slows, everything's slippery in his vision when he opens his eyes. 

“You’re the worst chosen one who’s ever been chosen,” escapes his mouth just as soon as he thinks it, and he giggles as Simon leaves, calling “fuck off,” over his shoulder. 

  
_**______________**_

  
Fifteen is the longest fucking year of his life. 

It feels fractured after that night in the Catacombs, after he’d finally been distracted enough to put Snow aside for once. Baz should have known that he wasn’t going to go that easily, of course not. The Chosen One, the savior of magic. He’s the sun, and Baz feels awfully like a comet streaking by, burning out along the way.

He comes back to himself slowly, pushing down his insecurities and disappointments instead of trying to swallow them. On the last day of winter break, Fiona hands him a tape recorder, and makes him swear not to speak while it’s recording. He doesn’t bother to ask, but his panic flares up in the center of his chest at the thought of what it can do.

And he doesn’t want to kill Simon, he’s never expected to. 

It’d go against everything if he even managed to get close to harming him, and Baz doesn’t want to find out what a world without Snow is like.

He is the sun. Bright, balancing the universe in the palms of his hands. He is life, but Baz only sees him as the hand that undoes him.

Since the day that he saw him, he hasn’t expected to make it out alive.

  
_**______________**_

It’s when the rumors start slowing down, sometime right before summer, that he starts to catch up. For the most part, everything’s normal, just the way it was. He feels like he’s missed out on so much during his low that time’s speeding up now, blurring in front of his eyes. 

When he takes a look at Simon, for the first time since the night, he notices the change immediately. In orange torch light, there hadn’t been a difference.

They’re older now, but he still looks like Simon – just more like The Mage too. He’s got this raw, bright energy in his eyes like he’s ready to blow everything into pieces. But that’s all that’s left; light in front of an empty screen.

_It’s her_ , he realizes. Wellbelove comes from a family of respectful parents, has probably never known any other pain in her life aside from having feelings for a hopeless case.

Somewhere along the time that Baz was absent, she’s taken him apart – uncrossed all his tangled strings and smoothed out all his jagged edges.

A nuclear weapon, completely sedated by a girl who has more reputation for her beauty than for her power. Snow’s a bomb with all of his wires cut. Baz can't stand it.

He grasps his sheets tightly as he tries to go to sleep to keep from shouting at him. Baz has seen him fall apart on the floor. He’s seen him shake apart with rage and go off in class and leak magic all over the damn place with no control, because that’s who he is.

But he's never been further from himself than he is now, smiling politely and sitting still.

Baz catches them going into the dining hall together, Wellbelove muttering at him to stand up straight as he walks in. He nearly thinks nothing of it, until he sees Snow getting up for seconds, and she places the tips of her fingers on his arm. Baz is too far away to hear what she’s saying, but there’s something odd on Simon’s face that makes his chest feel tight. He doesn’t move from the table until dinner ends, and later when they’re alone in the room, he flushes bright red when his stomach rumbles loudly. 

After class, Baz watches them stand together, nearly chest to chest. She’s frowning up at him, and his face is pinched, closed up. He hears Snow say something, and then walks by in time to hear her say something like, “You pay more attention to Penelope than me.”

If it’s meant to be a joke, Baz can’t find a trace of humor in her tone.

It happens, over and over again, the more he pays attention. Wellbelove scolding him, tugging lightly at his crooked tie for the fourth time in a day. Frowning lightly at him, like he’s something she can’t quite figure out. He looks over and there’s always something going on, but he can’t place it until Snow comes home one night, face blocked up with nothing behind it. 

Fear sparks through him, and then heavy anger. It’d be fine if there was _any_ emotion showing through on his face – anger, sadness, frustration. Any of those things is more Simon than this unseeing face, staring blankly at Baz before tossing his blazer on the desk chair and sinking into bed, without a single word. 

It’d be just fine if he was calm because she _settled_ him. Baz’s skin wouldn’t be crawling with so much anger if Simon was content, but he looks far from it. If she wanted someone calm, someone tidy, someone so entirely different from him, she should’ve chosen that.

Instead, she shacked up with the hero, desperate to turn his potential into something just like everybody else. She’s chipping pieces of him off until he reveals his shining self underneath. 

Looking at Simon’s unmoving face, he knows that there’s nothing underneath what’s already all there. He's already everything he's meant to be, every day.

It’s something Baz could never understand. His feelings for Simon aren’t some exclusive attraction to his magic, to what he could be. He loves the mess of him, the chaotic, emotional, blustering boy who’s been covered up, sedated. He wants to tell him that he’s always been more than his potential. That right now, he _is_ more than that – he’s human, and alive, and so much more than what everyone thinks. 

He wants to tell him that he’s the center of everything, that he’s not meant to be eclipsed by anyone, that she’s killing him just as much as the Mage is. 

Instead, a weak-hearted jab falls from his mouth. “You’re much less feral now, Snow. Is Wellbelove keeping you on a leash?”

Simon just flicks his eyes over to him, not blinking, before shutting closed with a sigh. 

The next week, he summons a chimera in the Wavering Wood and tempts Snow out cruelly. Cruelty is thick, fogs up the glass in Baz’s chest so his feelings don’t shine through. And Simon comes alive again, after so long. No more blushing after a crude curse, no straightly knotted tie or fixed up hair. In this moment; he’s elemental, beautiful, _himself_.

Baz wants to knock him down and kiss him.

He yells at him instead, until he becomes more magic than boy, more fire than smoke. 

They wake up after, Baz feeling burnt. Simon is hollow again, but bright. And annoyed. Nothing's changed, and it makes Baz's teeth grind together.

_**______________**_

  
He waits on the lawn with the tape recorder in his pocket. 

He knows the second that Simon steps out of class that he’ll see him and immediately be suspicious, that he’ll come over and question him. Snow will go off and he’ll press the stupid button and whatever it’s going to do will happen.

He tries not to worry that it’ll kill him, but he’s so angry that he doesn’t think he would mind all that much anyway. He hates how bad it affects him to see him just walking out of class, hates that he’s affected him every day since he met him. And really, what’s the point of a life that he’s just going to give away? He keeps shoving himself down, keeps going off and the glint in his eyes is becoming more magic than life.

Simon catches his eyes across the lawn and Baz is struck breathless by how in tune they are to each other, how, in another life, it could have been an amazing thing that he knows where he's at somehow. He only has a moment to settle the devastation simmering under his skin before Snow reaches him.

He doesn’t have to worry much about drawing his attention. Baz looks away as he comes closer, already smelling like smoke and burning magic. So much more of him than Baz has gotten in the past months, and he feels his rage bubbling up again at the sight of it, the way he transforms back into himself only when he’s fighting. The perfect pawn for a war, the Mage’s choice.

Simon opens his mouth and Baz presses down murderously on the switch.

And then Philippa Stainton breaks off from a group of friends, somewhere behind Baz and starts shouting at him, right as Baz lets go.

_**______________**_

_“Did you hear about Pip?”_

_“No one knows what happened. She’d just been walking with Simon and all of a sudden… It was just awful.”_

_“I’ve never heard anything quite like that. It was like her whole soul was being sucked from her.”_

Baz feels numb when he goes back to their room after dinner, ignoring the way his skin burns under Simon’s glare.

“They’re saying that she might not recover,” he says as he stalks in to the room, right after Baz. 

“How unfortunate. Wellbelove’s father is her doctor, so I’m sure she’ll make it out quite alright.”

Snow’s face contorts and Baz contemplates leaving for the night. It was just a guess, but it looks like something’s flipped and landed in Simon’s face.

He expects him to be calm, the settled mirror version of himself that his girlfriend adores. But when he tilts his head in Snow’s direction, he catches the clenched jaw, his angry eyes catching the moonlight outside. 

“How do you know that? Have you talked to Agatha?” It’s the angriest Baz has seen him since the chimera, and it should worry him, but instead it sends a thrill through him. He twists his relief into a smirk, satisfaction spilling sugary ease into his bloodstream as he stares at Simon’s face. 

_This is how to get back to him. How to get him back to himself_ , he thinks, twisting around completely now to face him. 

“Ask her yourself Snow. She _is_ your girlfriend, right?”

He growls, stalking over to Baz and curling his hand into Baz’s collar. 

“Anathema, Snow,” he grits out quietly, trying not to lean into the warm fingers grazing his neck where the shirt meets his skin.

“Anathema,” Simon repeats through clenched teeth. His hands are shaking, and he’s looking straight into Baz’s eyes.

Baz could kiss him, right here. Fucking _finally_ , and he'd take himself out in the process. He flexes his fingers at his side, just barely stopping himself from putting his hands in Simon’s hair. He could make like he’s going to push him off, or dig his fingers into his jaw like he’s angry. 

But he couldn’t manage to pretend, not right now while Snow looks so much like himself. Falling apart, a loose end unravelling all his sharp edges. Baz would rather hold him together, wants him to learn to be happy with everything that he is now, instead of everything that he could be. He wants to kiss him.

Simon steps away before he can do anything.

_**6th Year** _

  
Baz comes back after a miserable summer, to see Snow curled up on the bed with his head in his hands. There’s a crumpled purple sweatshirt on the floor that says _Wellbelove_ on it, and his shirt’s all wrinkled under like he’d been wearing the sweater and tore it off. 

“Snow,” he says, fighting every impulse to sink to his knees in front of him and hold him while cries. He fights equally hard not to be cruel with him, has to grit his teeth to keep his insult from spilling out. There’s no point when he knows exactly how to get to him now without lying straight through his teeth. 

His head jerks up at the sound of Baz’s voice – he’s mostly always caught off guard, even after so many years of being around each other. 

“Baz,” he replies, quietly. _He always comes back like this_ , Baz reminds himself. _Dormant, like he’s been asleep for the past months and he’s only just waking up_. His voice is rough, and his eyes are rimmed in pale red.

Snow’s eyes are blue, just a normal shade. They’re not icy or deep or clear, they’re only blue. If he tried to explain how the plain shade of Snow’s eyes makes him want to burn the world down to protect him, he’d fail.

His heart slams against his chest as Simon gets up, shutting the door quietly behind him as he leaves. 

  
_**______________**_

  
The latest rumor is that Wellbelove broke up with Snow, which explains the crying. Baz has her for Latin in the morning and catches her staring on more than one occasion. He forces down a sneer and settles for a smirk, tamping down his surprise when she blushes and tucks her hair behind her ear. It goes on for the rest of class, Baz sending occasional glances her way while she flushes under his gaze. He regrets it when she calls his name as he leaves, slipping through the door without another glance in her direction.

Snow’s in his Astronomy class in the next period, which makes his regret grow. He figured since it was a new course (and has really nothing to do with magic or politics) that The Mage wouldn’t let him take it. But in the past week, Snow’s been restless. Baz had come in after dinner one night to find Bunce on the floor, listening to him go on and on about choosing his own schedule for the first time. 

He’d walked straight past them and into the bathroom, hearing Snow’s stifled shout when he slammed the door, loud enough to draw their attention. Bunce was gone by the time he’d come out again, as he’d hoped. He’d been annoyed because he could smell her on his bed – chocolate and herbs – and because Snow refused to go to sleep. He'd spent an hour worrying over his schedule, muttering things about how the Mage hasn’t talked to him since term started.

Then when he finally flicked off the lights, he spent another three hours awake, shooting worried glances over at Baz like he’d turn them in. _Please_ , he'd almost scoffed, _as if The Mage would do anything to you_.

Simon fell asleep restlessly, hands curled up in fists by his head. Baz slipped out of the room when he heard Wellbelove’s name slip from between his teeth, followed by a quiet _no_. 

_**______________**_

  
He thought it might be better that they’re broken up, but he was wrong (he hasn’t been right about anything for a while.)

The staring is incessant – Wellbelove in the morning and Snow all afternoon. They sit at opposite ends of the dining hall and Baz sits in the middle, each of them throwing glances at him until they catch each other’s eye and turn away.

He can smell Simon’s magic from across the room, flooding the dining hall. Wellbelove wrinkles her nose, then turns to Baz like she expects approval. He raises an eyebrow as he stands up smoothly, ignoring the sound of Bunce’s protests and Snow tripping over himself to get up. 

It becomes a constant. Staring and cursing and the smell of perfume, chased by smoke. 

It’s a constant until it isn’t, until Snow corners him one night in their room, edges blurring and eyes flashing at him. And they must be together again, because Simon is baring his teeth at him, smelling like magic even though he hasn’t done anything to irritate him on purpose.

“Stay the fuck away from her,” he growls. Baz hasn’t ever been one for the idea of coming out, but he’s so tempted in that moment. He gets caught up in the same grey thoughts, blood and ache and a passion that’s just as much violence as it is attraction.

Simon presses closer, then away, when Baz doesn’t respond. There’s a spark in his stare, only for a moment, and it’s relief patching up the hole in his chest. Seeing Simon come back to himself in flashes like this, knowing that only he brings it out anymore, is devastating, in both good and bad ways. He bristles, and his eyes are so _blue_.

Then there’s nothing, _nothing_ at all as he turns away.

Baz spends a week gluing back the pieces of his wall that crumbled that night, spends that time watching and hating it. He stares at them freely, now that he can pretend it’s about her, now that it makes Snow come alive under his gaze again. They’re back together now, but Wellbelove still tries to catch his eye, even as she cleans Snow up.

He watches her pull on his sleeve when he gets too noisy at dinner, watches him inflate when she links their fingers. Only when he’s straying, on the verge of loud but not quite.

Only when his attention is elsewhere, or he’s mucking something up again. Baz wonders how she can say she loves him ans still strip him bare of everything that he is. 

He lies in bed and doesn’t sleep and wonders how she loves him at all, if all she does is cover him up, hold him back. Simon isn’t settled, he’s stifled. He’s not just a hero; he’s a human being. He watches Snow fall apart over the Mage not paying him any attention and watches Wellbelove bury his feelings under frowns and gentle touches. 

It’s a long year, and he’s not getting any more alive. All he does is watch and it does everything it needs to. He sends her a look at the dance and she comes sauntering around, coy smile gracing her pale mouth. In another life, Baz might’ve found her beautiful. In this one, she fades into his periphery, even as they spin together in a slow circle, and Snow makes up the whole fucking world.

Baz meets his eyes from across the room and smiles. 

  
_**7th Year** _

  
Summer feels like taking a breath of air right before plunging into water. Coming back feels like filling his pockets with stones and walking into the river. His feelings feel too much like the gravel in his pockets. Useless, except for when they keep him from treading water.

Simon is there – he’s _always_ there when Baz gets back from summer break, like he never left at all. And seeing him is always the same thing – relief that he’s still alive, disgust at how dead he looks, and that same want, burning in the pit of Baz’s stomach. To see him whole, even if a little hollow, is always so good. He knows it’s hopeless to want anything else, so he’ll take what he can get, until he can’t anymore. Just the sight of him, spooling gold in his chest.

Simon snarls at Baz when he finally notices him, and Baz aches down to his fingertips with want.

He sneers in return, the ghost of a smile that Snow could never find. He’s never dug deeper than what’s on the surface, always just takes what he sees and what he’s told and runs with it. Baz has always wanted to tell him that’ll end up being his downfall in the end, but never does. 

Enemy advantage, and all that. Snow leaves sometime while Baz is unpacking his toiletries, the door slamming closed and making him wince.

_**______________**_

Somehow, it’s worse this year. Snow is incessant, caught somewhere between their second year, when all he wanted was to stay away from Baz, and their fifth, when he couldn’t stay away to save his life. Snow never goes back to the Catacombs after that night. But he waits either way, eyes only staying closed after Baz has stepped back into the room.

He suspects it’s the Mage. He’s come back, finally, and he’s just as incessant. It’s first year all over again, pulling him from lessons, choosing his classes for him. Baz takes Astronomy again, because stars influence control and power, and he needs both to keep his head above water. Simon does too, which is why he’s sitting in the seat across from Baz, head resting heavily in his arms. 

He suspects it’s the Mage, because they have every class together this year.

He’s always there, hovering, messing up spells with his irritation. It’s where Baz’s lines shift, when he goes from wanting to draw a reaction out of him to wanting to calm him down. Pull him aside when he gets frustrated and help him work on control, hold him tight until the tension in his shoulders eases. It’s when he realizes, truly, that he’s hopeless. That more than anything, he wants to put him at ease. Take him apart, but put him back together the same way he is. 

It’s horrifying. It’s worse when he realizes that it’s because he looks at Simon sometimes, when he’s exhausted, when he walks into the room with his sword still out, and sees himself. Exhausted, worn. Heavy, even if it won’t show the next day, or show at all. 

_**______________**_

The Mage is training him for something again. He’s coming back to the room late again, smelling too much like magic and blood. And he’s ruthless, strong and resolute. His magic is enough to hold him up, and he’s broad shouldered and eats enough to look strong.

But these days he looks like a marionette – like a puppet on strings. There are days when the light just goes out inside of him and he looks like he's just being pulled along. 

Baz wonders how long it’ll take before he collapses in on himself. He’s balancing the weight of their world on his shoulders, bursting with magic. To some, he’s strong because of these things.

He looks like prophecy, to everyone else. Baz recognizes it as prostration. 

Simon comes into Astronomy late every day for a week, pale-faced and limping. He puts his head in his hands and the professor starts a lecture on black holes, another lesson that Snow will miss while he's dreaming.

_You’re killing him_ , he thinks and never says, as he watches Simon collapse on their bedroom floor that night.

There are nights when he sleeps covered in blood that isn’t his own. Nights when Baz sees him curled into a knot on the floor and isn’t sure whether he’s having a nightmare or he’s awake. 

These nights, he realizes that the nightmares have started to blend, until he can’t tell if it’s him or Simon on the floor.

The only difference is that it’s always his own blood, in the nightmares.

_**______________**_

He’s still got Wellbelove, but she’s a helpless accessory piece. All she can do is cry over his state, hold him tighter.

But still, it’s more than Baz can do for him. And it’s enough to pull him together, on some days. He’s still ridiculously brave, still a martyr. He still wakes up in the morning and breathes deeply, like he’s getting ready to try his best. Or like he’s not sure when he’ll get the chance to breathe again. It’s a good day, when he pauses before he gets up. 

Simon walks in on the last day of lecture, of the lesson about how stars can die, can burst and create a mass of nothing. 

Baz watches Simon stare blankly at the board, and understands exactly what it means for a star to burn out.

_**______________**_

Simon can’t leave well enough alone, though, not even when he’s falling apart. And Wellbelove can’t leave Baz alone in general. It’s where the problem starts, when he realizes that Snow has gotten Wellbelove to believe that he’s a vampire. Not that he can say they’re wrong, but he’d rather a million people know over Snow and his girlfriend. 

They sit in the dining hall for breakfast at the same table, like usual. Bunce sits across from them, the only one in that group that Baz knows to have common sense. They take turns staring at him covertly, (not that Snow knows how to do anything covertly) and trade comments. If he felt like it, he could listen in on their conversation – vampirism is good for some things, enhanced senses being one of them. He ignores the rush of guilt he feels at finding at advantage, apologizes to his mother’s chorus of protest in his head.

For a moment, he’s just thankful for the fact that something’s gotten Simon to light up again. Even if it’s his own downfall. 

He doesn’t even think to pay it anymore attention, not until he notices that they’re spending more time apart. Baz is leaving lessons and catches sight of Wellbelove, up on the bridge by herself. Snow is in their room, squinting out the window at the pitch like he’s looking for something, for someone. He’s not sure that it’s her he’s searching for, because he steps away as soon as Baz comes in. 

“What?” he snarls, tone too bitter to be derisive. Baz catches his eye, knows instantly that he’s spoiling for a fight. His jaw is set, hands shifting by his hip where his sword appears. Baz has no interest in indulging him, not tonight when he feels so on edge. The past week has felt off in a way that he can’t explain. He feels like he’s being watched – even when he’s feeding. It doesn’t click until the last week of term, the night before graduation.

It was stupid to hunt in the Wavering Wood in the first place, (it’s stupid that he has to hunt at all.) But it’s more stupid that he didn’t notice Wellbelove standing there on the bridge as he left, didn’t notice her creeping up behind him until she said his name aloud as he sunk his teeth into a rabbit. 

He hears her gasp, right after, and immediately freezes in his crouch. He pulls back slowly, swallowing down his fear and feeling his face for blood. Carefully, he stands, willing his face not to betray his nerves. He’s about to threaten her, force her to swear silence and take off before she can say anything else. But her wide eyes are shifting, creasing with sympathy that makes Baz feel sick, walking over to him like this is normal, like she hasn’t just seen him draining an animal.

_You should be horrified_ , he thinks. _I am. Anyone would be._

“He was right,” she says, voice lacking any real surprise. There’s no hint of malice or horror, nothing that tells Baz she’s going to run off and tell the Mage or Snow. Still, her indifference makes him recoil.

Snow’s voice echoes in his mind. _Vampire_. 

Baz’s echoes back. _Monster_.

“Basil-”

“You can’t tell anyone. Not even Snow,” he says, desperation coating his words. She frowns and steps closer, hands swinging loosely at her sides. 

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

It’s then that Baz sees him, a flash of golden light at the edge of his vision. He can smell Bunce next to him too, smoke and herbs filling his nostrils. Wellbelove hasn’t noticed, too caught up in her Victorian gothic romance drama to do anything else but stand here expectantly. 

Baz swears that next time he feeds, he’s going to make it as horrifying as possible so whoever finds him just runs (if he’ll have a next time, if Snow doesn’t just off him right here.)

He doesn’t have time to deal with her romantic schemes, doesn’t have the energy to pretend to be interested. But Snow’s waiting, not crashing forward all at once, probably because of Bunce, and Wellbelove’s still staring at him, so he reaches down to take her hands. 

Baz can barely hear the sound of Snow crashing through the trees over the sound of her heart now, but he can smell him getting closer, smoke coming off of the sword in his hands. He spares a look out of the corner of his eye, catches sight of Bunce with her hand on his arm, trying to reel him back. He’s got Wellbelove’s attention now, and she huffs under her breath at the sight. 

“ _Simon_ ,” she says, and then they’re just gone. Both of them, like they were never even there. 

“What the fuck just happened to Snow?” he asks, dropping her hands and ignoring the pout she sends his way as he stalks off.

  
_**Eighth Year** _

  
The last time he’d seen Snow, he crashed the leaving ceremony, covered in blood. It was leaking out of his pores, spilling out all over the place. He’d gone missing for a few hours and then just showed up in the middle of it, Bunce clutching his arm so tight that Baz could see the indents her fingernails left behind. Everyone was screaming or crying, or both.

_She’d_ been crying, and she looked absolutely exhausted. But all Baz could see was Simon, breathing hard, eyes wide. 

He doesn’t like to think about that, if he can help it. He doesn’t know if he’s even okay, doesn’t know what it means that he’s been in a bloody coffin for so long. His leg aches horribly, and he’s always dizzy, always feels like he’s falling and can’t stop. It’s the dark closing in on him from all sides, the smell of blood and sweat and dirt. 

_Dead. He could be gone_ , he thinks, and can’t hold back an angry sob, can’t help from clenching his hands into fists at his side to quell the thought. It’s no good to imagine that, not if he wants to get through this. He doesn’t know if he’ll get through this, how much of it he still has to get through. He can’t tell the time except for quick flashes of daylight filtering in, and then the endless night that comes after that. 

When he’s not aching or sleeping, he floats away. Just enough that he’ll stay tethered to his skin, on the days when he can’t feel his own nails digging into his palms. He thinks of Simon the day he met him. Eyes bright, hungry. Impatient. Clothes hanging off his frame, shaved sides on his head with ridiculous curls flopping over the top. Perpetual blush and more moles on his face than Baz had on his entire body. 

He thinks of Simon during his worst days, just to remedy the ache of seeing him hurting with the sweetest images of him sleeping, peaceful for once. He’s untouchable, he was born to be. Baz has never believed in that stupid prophecy, but he repeats it to himself every time before he goes to sleep, needing to believe in something. It feels like a nightmare, it feels like being young again and telling himself a bedtime story because no one else would. He lets his eyes slip closed and thinks of Simon, golden and warm.

He presses his fingers into his cold arms and wishes to feel a little more than half alive, wishes for sunshine.

_**______________**_

  
It feels like a year before he hears horrible, grinding noises outside, like something he’s never heard before. At first, he thinks he’s dying, that this is what hellfire sounds like. And then the lid opens and bright light pours over him, blinding him for a few seconds before he blinks and sees Fiona standing over him. The sunlight filters in her hair, making the white streak glow in front of her frowning face.

“Numpties, Baz?” 

“Ransom, Fiona?” is all he has to say in reply.

_**______________**_

  
He doesn’t hear the bloody end of it, not even when he’s stuffing his face full of burgers and then throwing it right up in the same minute. She looks at him with mostly disgust, but relief crawls onto her face after a while. He’s never been more relieved to be alive, even if he’s not really. The sun burns just a bit more after being in the dark so long, but he won’t complain. 

They argue about going back, even though it’s not much use. He’s going back – Fiona still hasn’t mentioned anything about Snow, (not directly, but she blames the Mage for Baz going missing). He can’t blame her, though, he knows what it looks like. 

War has casualties; Baz knows this. But it doesn’t make sense that he wasn’t killed, if that was the goal. It feels more like torture, like a message trying to get across. Fiona casts healing spells over and over, but it only lessens the ache in his leg to a dull pain. She makes him sit in the backseat, and he’s too tired to complain more than once. 

_**______________**_

They all try to get him to stay for longer than he does, but he can’t. Not now. If there is a war, he needs to be there, needs to be secure and surrounded by other students. Maybe he’s not close with anyone, but a witness is a witness. He doesn’t need to be offed here at home, surrounded by a family who trust each other but no one else, and who have no one’s trust. 

The Old Families don’t have credibility with The Coven, and Baz isn’t an exception. It’s October, and he’s going back to school to make up the month he missed. He’s given Bunce enough of a head start to take his ranking, and he’ll be damned if she actually manages it. There’s the war, there’s his grades, and his mother’s body, sealed up under the school. 

And Snow. He must be alive still – there’d be no war without The Mage’s nuclear weapon. As long as he’s alive, Baz would do anything to get back to him, in the end. If he dies, he’ll go by Snow’s hand, or his own. 

_**______________**_

He walks in when everyone’s in the dining hall, mostly for dramatics. But if he thinks too hard about it, it’s because if he catches Simon in their room when it’s just the two of them, he doesn’t know what he’ll do. Baz is scared that if he looks less than whole, he won’t be able to stop himself from holding him down to see if he’s real, or if he’s still just a figment of his imagination.

Baz worries that maybe he won’t see him there, but Snow stands as soon as his eyes catch on Baz in the doorway, chair flying out from under him while Bunce tugs on his shirt sleeve to get him to sit down. _Alive, indeed._ He looks too thin, and he’s got dark circles that Baz can see from over here.

Maybe he thought that Baz was dead.

From the looks on everyone’s faces, he thinks that maybe they all thought so too. 

Wellbelove is sitting apart from them, face pinched when Baz meets her eye. He has nothing to offer her that she could want, so he just looks, lets her run off with that. He smells smoke coming up from the other end of the dining hall and breathes it in, relaxing finally.

_**______________**_

It continues, the way it always has. Life goes on, and Baz is all too tired to deal with it. Snow gets in his space more than usual, then flinches back like he’s hiding something. He doesn’t bother to ask, figures it’s something else about the war. Baz dances around Wellbelove, ignoring her petulance and barely holding back from telling her that he couldn’t be interested in her, in any way. He wants to ask what exactly she could be lacking from Simon Snow that makes her want to pursue Baz instead. 

He’s not perfect, not at all. But there’s so _much_ of him to love, so much of him to take in and hold. He wonders if Wellbelove thinks that _he’s_ perfect, and wants to laugh at the thought. _She knows what I am._

Neither of them is perfect. Baz wonders why she so stubbornly wants what’s wrong for her, when she has destiny right in front of her.

Snow’s not taking it well, both Baz being back, and the split. He keeps his eyes on him all the time now, even more unbearably vigilant than fifth year. Worse than seventh, too.

At least then, all he cared about was Wellbelove. Now…

Now, Baz doesn’t know what he wants. 

He’s got too much to focus on, Fiona’s voice in his head reminding him that this is bigger now, that there’s something else going on. She tells him to check the Mage’s office for clues, like he’ll find something useful. Odds are, he’ll come back empty handed and dead tired. Thirsty too, since he’s been limiting his time in the Catacombs. 

It’s too dark down there, and it feels too much like he’s back in the coffin. No sense of time, rhythm, nothing but unrelenting darkness. 

His thoughts creep up on him, making sleep an unthinkable concept, just out of reach. He’s walking to The Mage’s office before he even realizes, feet numb and leg tingling all the way up to his hip. It probably didn’t heal right, he thinks as he scans the bookcase when he finally gets into his office. He smells Snow before he sees the light flash on the books in front of him and nearly sends the whole set crashing down.

Simon Snow, crashing in once again. Baz wishes tiredly that he’ll only turn him in, get him expelled. At least that way, he’d be able to rest properly. But he’s never that lucky. He finds himself leaning against the shelf while Snow kneels in front of him, frowning at a paper on the floor. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, like it’s his fault that Baz is dead. Or maybe he’s apologizing for seeing the picture at all. 

But then he says that he has something to say, and Baz knows that he’s apologizing for what he’s going to say next. 

_**______________**_

  
Simon Snow is shaking on the edge of the bed, and Baz can’t contain himself. 

  
_His mother_. She came back to visit him and he was gone. He missed his one chance and his mother had pressed her last kiss onto Snow’s forehead and disappeared with a message Baz could barely decipher. He’s shaking apart just the way he’s seen Snow in the past, the jagged edges of his own mind coming up to poke at his throat and strangle him. 

He missed it. She could have been the one to tell him whether it was fine. Whether or not she was okay with what he is. He’d finally know, but he’d been gone and Snow took the message instead.

Simon catches his wrists in his hands, talks him down as if he has any idea what he’s talking about. There’s a knock at the door then, Bunce’s voice breaking apart the furious silence that surrounds them. He steps out as she falls in, crashing into Snow’s arms as he soothes her.

He can’t bear it tonight. He’s being too kind – the apology, the way his tone had softened as he brushed his fingers over his forehead. The way he grabbed Bunce like he was holding her together, the way Baz has wished to do for him so many times. He shakes his head, flying down the stairs two steps at a time. Back to the Catacombs.

He hopes the darkness swallows him whole, but he comes out later unharmed, still shaking slightly.

In the dark, Snow whispers it, so quietly that Baz can barely hear him. He rolls over to face him, eyes blinking wide in the dark like he’s trying to make out Baz’s face.

“Because she was your mother. And they killed her in front of you. And that’s – that’s wrong.”

Baz is already facing away from him when he finishes. 

_**______________**_

“You’re not getting off,” he says, as soon as Snow sits up in bed. Because he switched up, changed sides right in front of Baz. He’d known Simon was a hero, that he’s ruthless and doesn’t let up if he’s on a mission. He knew Simon was fiercely loyal, that he was honorable and every bit the savior character. 

He didn’t know that he could be so quiet though. He had no idea that Snow had the capacity to care, not about this. 

They’re still enemies, no matter how badly he wishes it were different. Snow proves it by starting an argument. He shouldn’t be surprised that he doesn’t trust this, but he can’t help but raise an eyebrow at Snow’s suspicions. 

_I’ve been bloody kidnapped for weeks and you think I brought my mother back from the dead just to antagonize you, Snow._

He doesn’t say that, though, not in those words. Just swears with magic that they’re on a truce. And so it begins.

Neither of them know where to start, and it feels like they’ll be crossing lines and uncrossing for a while, putting up and learning boundaries. Forgetting aggression. Baz doesn’t quite know what’s left under seven years of fury, natural antagonism. 

Concealing his feelings is much harder when Snow doesn’t spend every waking minute cursing his name and spitting at him.

He should’ve known not to do this. Reliving his death feels like a joke, going back to see what happened like it doesn’t haunt his worst nightmares already. Finding out that his mother killed herself, finding out that she was bitten. That she killed herself before she Turned, before she became a monster. 

Before she was like Baz. He sinks. Snow brushes his hand over his shoulder, playing his role, and he can’t help but be angry. He wants to break something. He wants to tell him not to do anything that he doesn’t mean, but instead, he gets sharp. Because it’s not at all okay, no matter how much Snow believes it is. 

_Is that how he thinks? That as long as he believes in something, it works out?_

He should have known better. Simon Snow is an idealist; a revolutionary singing about the way the world could be before he’s shot down. It might be the only thing about him that he finds repulsive. 

The world revolves around him – Baz’s world revolves around him. Of course he thinks that everything’s always okay. It always _has_ to be. The door slams shut while he hides his face in his hands.

_**______________**_

Simon’s magic suffocates him while he’s laying flat in his own grief, but it feels like breathing fresh air after sitting by a smoking fire for so long. Still, to smell it so closely while Simon’s not even in the room, means something’s wrong. He tries to look out the window as another wave of magic rolls over him, seeing streams of students out on the Lawn, all coming out to see Snow. He’s got his blade stuck in a dragon’s neck.

Baz curses as he runs out. He’s not even allowed to wallow properly now that he’s responsible for making sure Snow stays alive. (He’s not, not really. But he’s not letting him die without helping like he promised.) 

He yells out for Snow as he thinks about this new development, this world where Simon Snow makes him promises and Baz protects him from dragons. Now that he’s looking though, he’s probably going to have to protect the dragon from Snow. He casts a botched floating spell, gritting his teeth at the feeling of free-falling. 

“You’re flammable!” Simon shouts when he lands, right in front of a stream of fire.

“So is everything!”

_**______________**_

Bunce is rattling off while Baz thinks about what just happened. 

It felt like his magic, the thick waves of it in the air, only in his chest. Breathing in Simon’s magic and actually taking it _in_ , having that power source. And now Bunce wants to know how it happened. 

Baz couldn’t explain it. Neither can Snow, apparently. He’s just glad that she’s intrigued now, that she’s on board. She’s always given Baz a challenge at staying on top, and she seems to have a right moral compass. She’s also filled the chalkboard with more than he and Snow have, so he really has no problems following her lead. She’s logical, smart. 

Baz would say that he likes her, but he has no interest in making friends, especially not friends of Simon. He goes down to the Catacombs, mind swirling with information that doesn’t connect, staying until he’s sure that Bunce is gone, and then it’s just Snow when he comes back. 

His voice has gone soft again when he invites himself onto Baz’s bed, settling on top of the sheets gently. Holding his hand out, like this is all just _fine_. Like Baz isn’t reeling still from earlier, from feeling like he’d just swallowed the sun. 

_We have to try again_ , he says, brushing Baz’s arguments aside. He can’t help but be cruel – it’s the only thing that gets to him. The disgust on Simon’s face clears as he recovers fast, grabbing Baz’s hand before he can stop him. 

It feels like a fight, like the first punch thrown. He doesn’t let go, and Baz waits. 

The magic is a muted thrum in his arm where they’re connected, then spreads throughout his body, radiating from his chest. It feels like heat, like infinite power. He feels heady from the feel of it, the realization that he and Snow are holding hands. His palms are calloused against Baz’s own rough ones and it feels so _comfortable,_ for a moment, that he almost leans closer. 

The room disappears and the sky opens up, and Baz is _gone_. He wants to stay and stare at the stars, holding hands with the boy he’s loved for years. The boy who’s helping him avenge his mother’s death and is opening up his magic for him and breaking all of Baz’s cruel walls down. 

Their voices sound far away and he forgets most of what they say after it’s said. Snow looks thoughtful, and then the magic dissipates. Baz still feels like his heart’s on the outside of his body. 

Snow always disturbs the peace of things, even when he doesn’t mean to, and Baz is used to it, but it doesn’t make it any easier to handle. _Instigative idealist_. As if it’s as simple as admitting that he’s dead, that he’ll spend the rest of his life having to drink blood to survive. That he’s a monster. 

“I’m done with you today,” he says, shutting his eyes at the mix of thoughts rushing his mind. He feels burnt, on the surface where their hands were connected and on the inside of his chest. 

_**______________**_

He doesn’t know why he does it. It’s cruel to keep being aggressive, to keep softening and then just as Snow gets close enough to burn him, putting up guards. He doesn’t have another way, can’t risk falling into his orbit and never being free of the pull of his gravity. Otherwise, his feelings would spill out over everything, nothing to hide them.

He invites Snow to Hampshire, extends his home to the fucking orphan and gets rejected. As if he has anywhere else to go. He supposes that he _does_ , but he and Wellbelove aren’t together this time. So he tries again, extending peace in exchange for his own pain. Anger meets him, because Snow is a hero and all Baz is in his eyes is cruel.

He thought that telling him that he never cared for her was enough. It should have been, to know that Baz isn’t a threat, but Snow will always look to her before anything else.

Considering her feelings even as she rips his heart apart and chases after his enemy, ever the fucking hero. Armor goes up again, and Snow nearly punches him, nearly nicks his defenses. 

And then Baz is gone, leaving him behind. 

He tries to relish in it, being the one to walk away from Snow for once. But it doesn’t stop the crash, the feeling of finally hitting the ground after floating so long on his hopes. He knew, he’d _always_ known, that they were on opposite sides of a war that they have no place in. He’d just hoped that maybe Simon wouldn’t want to be, even if for a moment. He thought that maybe it’d changed, for a second.

He catches sight of Mummers on his way out, looks at the window and sees Snow leaning against the window. And it’s a loss, again, on Baz’s end. Because in the end, it’s what he’ll have to do. Because he's only ever lost.

_**______________**_

The library is quiet. He’d like to pretend that the silence is welcome, but it’s suffocating after making nice with Snow for so long. And then he’s bursting in, because he just can’t let Baz be. With information, he says, and shakes the snow and muck off his feet in the waiting area like the heathen he is. Gorgeous, even with his face all flushed and his hair in shambles. 

And he says, “Baz. You’re wearing _jeans_.”

Baz is enamored with him, and always has been and always will be. The mud on his clothes does more to make him look endearing than it does annoy him. Neutrality, for them, will be the closest to an apology. For arguing and for being angry at all. 

Snow has something to say, that’s why he’s here. Baz won’t fight him, if only to apologize by not saying anything at all.

Anxious flames lick at the inside of Baz’s ribcage, making his heart stutter nervously in his chest.

He tells him who Nicodemus is, because he managed to figure it out without even trying. Baz clamps down on his annoyance and stares down at Snow’s red socks to keep from gritting his teeth at him. Simon puts his hand on Baz’s chest and he wants to kiss him so bad that he aches, so he grabs his wrist and forces him away. Snow looks almost surprised that he let him keep his hand there at all, and pride funnels through to his face.

His transparency isn’t as obvious as he thought, then.

And then of course, because Snow likes being irritating, he asks him to pose a theory on vampirism, on the appealing aspects of it. As if revealing the benefits of it wouldn’t advertise that Baz knows exactly what he’s talking about. He does anyway, as Simon stares straight at him while he bares his soul. 

As if the things that he’s telling him make it worth it to have lost his soul – as if never getting sick is a benefit that outweighs having to kill to stay alive. He has to throw an insult to combat the vulnerability rising up on the surface.

He makes the mental note to talk to Fiona tomorrow, too tired to keep looking through his aunt’s old yearbook with Simon Snow. He leaves Snow in the guest room, the one with the worst of the wraiths, and hopes that he’ll wake up in the morning with Snow in his arms, apologetic and blustering through an explanation about how he was too scared to sleep alone. Baz will hush him and wrap his arms tighter around him, and they have no war to wake up to every morning.

The real Snow is clenching his jaw at the sight of the room, but shuts the door firmly behind him. The real Baz pads quietly outside to feed, willing himself to sleep dreamlessly tonight. 

Sometime in the middle of the night, Snow shows up to say he’s going back to Watford, and Baz can’t have that. So he offers his couch, knowing that even if Simon will never be weak enough to sleep in Baz’s arms, that he’ll still take the couch. 

“You creep _me_ out,” he says, as Baz throws his pillow at his face.

The sound of Simon’s breathing makes him relax into his bed, and he falls asleep easily. 

_**______________**_

It’s after midnight when they finally decide to head out. Fiona didn’t tell him much, but he trusts that finding the place won’t be hard. Snow complains that he’s stealing books as they sit to kill time, and Baz can only stand an hour of convincing himself that this isn’t a date. He goes and makes it worse, because Snow torments him whether or not he knows it, and asks that Baz call him by his first name. After he grabs his arm, staring at him with crumbs on his lower lip.

He doesn’t tell him that he’s always calling him by his first name, in his head, simply to save his pride. 

“Get in the car, Simon.” 

He does, and then fails at hiding the way his mouth quirks up. Baz is so in love with him that it hurts.

_**______________**_

  
Two hours pass and then the smell of blood is so strong that he stiffens in the seat. 

Two hours and then they’re walking into a bar, causing enough of a scene for all eyes to be on them. Baz isn’t unnerved – if anything he breathes easier, surrounded by the same type of people as he is. He’s more than them though, more than _all_ of them. They’re all dead, but Baz has magic. And he’s standing next to the boy from the prophecy, and they all know exactly who he is. 

Except, the second Nicodemus comes into view, he falters. Because he’s got a face like he doesn’t miss what he had, eyes gleaming with pleasure. He doesn’t look much like he’s lost his soul, like he’s traded off the feeling of life for more power. He looks like he doesn’t know what it’s like to feel dead, not like Baz.

And when Baz asks questions, he’s carefree. It undoes him, sends him spiraling. His fingers tremble where they’re wrapped around his cigarette. Nicodemus speaks vaguely, in hypotheticals and riddles and words that need explanation that he refuses to give. He’s more interested in vampirism, in the fact that they’re similar and Baz is trying to fill the role of someone bigger than he is. 

He doesn’t say it, but the suggestion is there. It’s the hidden ‘ _you’re no better than I am_ ’ when he says ‘ _you’ll find your way back here someday_.’ Maybe Snow knows, because he’s tugging him away before Baz figures it out. He knows enough to piece it together, but he still feels dissatisfied.

He’s already walking away when Simon pauses to tell Nicodemus that his sister misses him. It’s enough to make Baz wait for him, that tiny shred of hope he still has, but it also ignites the rage in his gut and keeps him moving forward. His mind is spinning, thoughts shifting.

His mother’s dead, he’s dead, and Simon is sitting next to him with a hand on his arm, letting Baz draw magic from him. He’s so _alive_.

The thought makes him want to scream. He feels the truth grate on his entire being. 

_**______________**_

He doesn’t know where he’s crashed the car, only that there’s enough trees here to do what he needs to. He hopes that he looks like he knows what he’s doing so that Snow will stay in the car, but he can hear him crashing around in the snow behind him. His voice, yelling after him, makes him swell with sadness.

He settles onto his knees, shaking with his sobs. His wand sings in his hand, lighting up the branch of the tree he’s sitting under. He hopes that it hits him on the top of the head, hopes that it puts him to sleep before he starts to burn. He can’t think beyond that, can’t think of anything but his mother’s voice in his head telling him that she’s sorry she couldn’t save him. 

_I’ll save myself, mother. You can rest now._

  
His head is in his arms and Snow’s calling his name. Telling him that it’s alright, even as the flames spread above them. Baz can’t bear it happening so slowly, so he shoots out more magic, watching the circle of trees catch instantly. He doesn’t mean to tell Snow what he’s thinking but he can’t help it. He tells him that he’s a vampire, confirms years of suspicion and accusations.

And Simon says, “no you’re not,” like an idiot, like a fucking _hero_. There's so many things he can say, so many that he wants to say.

And he doesn’t even want to die. He just wants to stop feeling like it's the only peace he'll ever get in life.

Snow grabs his face, hands blissfully hot against his skin. He leans into it, only for a second, before he tries to jerk his head away. He’s a monster, and Simon knows that. His grip gets stronger around Baz’s jaw when he says that he won’t turn his back on him, though, and it _hurts_. 

It’s an knife to the heart with a pretty jewel in the handle. Baz knows that he hasn’t turned his back on him – he _couldn’t_ , with how scared he was of getting killed all the time. But there’s that glimmering hope to follow the pain. It's double meaning; it’s a promise. And it hurts because that’s all they know to do to each other. To hurt, and follow with promises to be better, to choose _against_ it. 

Baz wants to kiss him, more than anything. Words are useless right now; he has too many things to say that couldn’t mean a damn thing. A kiss says everything - it's an explanation, it's a promise. An apology, for the way things went.

Simon’s staring at his mouth, like he knows, and Baz closes his eyes a bit. Just for a second, it’d be nice. He’s never wanted to kiss anyone except for Simon, has imagined countless times that it wouldn’t mean a thing if it was anybody else. Simon Snow is crouched in front of him, blue eyes spilling tears and burning with anger. And he’s so alive, and Baz just wants him to know that he’s loved, that he loves him.

“ _Simon_.” They're both crying now and Simon's hands are shaking. There's nothing left in the air but smoke, and the smell of burning pines.

His eyes are dancing, reflecting flame in tears streaks and moving all over Baz’s face.

And suddenly, his lips press hard against Baz’s own, fracturing his thoughts down the middle. His mind’s swirling thoughts sift and drain, replaced by gentle colors. Fire swirls behind his eyelids, and Simon’s mouth is opening against his, softening the burn of the cross necklace against his throat. 

His hands are still pressing warm against Baz’s face, fingers digging into his jaw like he’s trying to pull him from where they’re sitting. It grounds him, makes him realize that the fire’s crawling closer. He pushes him off, and shouts out the only spell he knows that will stop it, as Simon places his hands over his chest. 

He can’t tell if the smoke is coming from the trees or if it’s just Simon. He can’t begin to care, not when his mouth still aches with the memory of shifting lips, of dreams incarnate. He rips off Snow’s necklace, fingers trailing over his freckled skin. Skin, and blood flowing, just under it. Heart beating hard under Baz’s hand.

_Alive_ , right now, even if he won’t always be. 

Even if Baz won’t ever be. 

Their lips connect again and his mind goes quiet.

_**______________**_

Simon’s hand slips through his hair, fingers closing and Baz can’t help but press closer. 

“Sorry,” Simon says. 

Baz shakes his head, thoughts slipping like he’s poured them into a sieve. As soon as he pulls away, he smells Snow’s blood between them. “Put on your cross,” he says, and Simon wrinkles his nose. 

“Are you gonna bite me?” 

Baz has never, and would never. He tells Snow as much, and he responds, “No. You’ve never kissed me before either.”

“ _You_ kissed _me_ , Snow.”

He doesn’t quite believe it though. 

They end up driving home, after Snow insisted on watching him feed. He won’t stop smiling, and Baz wonders for a brief moment if he’s gone insane. He’s rambling on – about vampirism, blood. He touches Baz’s cheek, going on about how he’s warmer. 

He’s being much too casual, acting like this is normal. Baz turns into his drive and thinks about Simon’s daily life, deciding that kissing a vampire in the forest is probably one of the least strange things he’s done. He’s maybe not used to kissing a bloke though, not with the way Baz keeps catching him touch his mouth.

Or maybe he’s just hungry. He offers him food and they go upstairs. Snow’s about to start asking questions again, but really, he’s too tired for it. He answers one and lets them eat in silence, standing to move the dishes outside and start a fire when they’re done. 

“You’re a pyro,” he says. Baz is thinking the same thing, is trying to kill the thought that it’d be easier to burn the house down than keep going on.

The words between them are broken pieces of a conversation, things that Baz wants to say coming out drenched in lighter fluid, and Simon’s response burning them up between them. It’s reassurance poured warm over Baz’s cool skin. It’s a kiss when he’s sure he’ll never get another again. 

_**______________**_

The fire is dying in front of them, and they’re holding hands, revealing truths. For each time that Simon opens his mouth to say another word, Baz falls in love with him, over and over again. 

With the Simon who doesn’t think about things he can’t help. With the him that doesn’t know whether he’s gay, but knows for sure that he wanted to kiss Baz. With the him that smiles at the feeling of Baz’s lips pressed to his cheek, with the curve of his face, with the flush of his skin and the mess of curls feathering out from the top of his head. 

  
He was right to say that Simon Snow isn’t weak enough to sleep in his arms, but he folds Baz into his own, weakness and all. They fall asleep like that, back to chest, Simon’s face tucked into the back of Baz’s neck, arms wrapped around his middle.

_**______________**_

The spell breaks in the morning, because Bunce is on her way to talk about what they know. Because even if the most shocking thing about this entire plan is the fact that Snow wants to kiss him, it has nothing to do with this. 

The clock hasn’t struck twelve, but the magic fades, because Baz won’t be stupid enough to drop his defenses again. Simon doesn’t think it’s obvious that Baz won’t hurt him, and Baz doesn’t think that they have a future where Simon won’t end him to save the world. He’s cruel, he knows it, but he feels like he has no choice when Snow paints roses over all the complicated things.

Cruelty can't compare though, not when Simon latches onto Baz’s impossible fondness, twisting it and forcing it back on him. He's hopeless. Simon sticks his finger in Baz’s face.

“You slept in my arms,” he says.

“Fitfully,” he replies, and it’s the truth. He woke up each time Simon shifted, sure that he might pull away and leave Baz alone. 

Simon drops his hand and Baz’s defenses fall with it. He reaches to pick up his boundaries, barbed wire words to keep him from getting too close, but ends up with Simon’s hand instead. Their fingers loop together, softly, and it’s like a dream. And then they kiss, and it’s so far from a dream that it takes his breath away. 

Simon tilts his head up to catch his mouth, every time. It’s always so much better than what Baz could have imagined. He’s in love with him, always has been and will be, and Simon prefers this to fighting. 

But when the magic fades, Baz feels like their lips are connecting through a gap in a fence. 

_**______________**_

As it turns out, Wellbelove is lethally irritating when she’s stressed. They share information, and Baz is exhausted and barely listening by the time she brings up the Mage. Simon agrees with her, because he’s infuriating and has been hopelessly dependent on her opinion for years. Thankfully, Bunce is on his side to keep it from going further on her suggestion. His mind feels numb by the time he stands up to grab their coats, but Wellbelove’s soft voice still trickles through.

Simon’s smile burns into the backs of his eyelids as she asks him to come home with her for Christmas. He can see it in the mirror across the room, the way his eyes shine and his grin splits his face in two.

Baz wants to tell Wellbelove that they kissed last night, and some this morning, right before they showed up. He wants to take her outside and ask her if she knew that Simon doesn’t like to think about certain things because they hurt him. If she knows a single thing about him at all, if she cares at all, like Baz does. 

He wants to pull Simon aside and tell him that he’s never going to kiss his idiotic face again, that he completely understands why Wellbelove wanted to be with himself instead.   
But he’s silent and petulant instead, and Simon only hesitates once before he disappears with them.

_**______________**_

He’s clutching his violin, holding his body still so he doesn’t let disappointment creep into his limbs. He’s already feeling the loss, the way his body feels colder now that Simon isn’t there brushing careful fingers over his arm, or pressing their lips together.

His father comes in and speaks to him about the same old things, and nothing really catches Baz’s attention until his mind draws a connection and comes to _therapist_. It’s been too long to even consider having one now, but he thanks him anyway, pushing down his resentment. That old anger at his father for withdrawing after his mother passed.

He focuses more on the current pain, the way his shoulders are freezing cold. He’d be warmer in his suit probably, so he goes upstairs to change for dinner, managing a dry laugh at the irony of Simon _Snow_ keeping him warm.

Mordelia interrupts the silence, swinging Baz’s door open so fast that it slams against the wall. He shoos her out until she knocks, ignoring her groaning complaints.

“Your friend’s back,” she says, and Baz is barely listening anymore, mind trailing over all the bad reasons why Snow would have come back. An attack, maybe it was a trick to get him to go back. He grits his teeth at the sight of him standing there, looking the same as he did when he first showed up. 

Flushing like mad, hands raking mud through his wet hair. Baz doesn’t want to even ask how he got mud on his hands, if all he did was walk back here, so he just looks him over coolly. Like he hasn’t been mourning the feeling of warmth for most of the evening, or thinking of all the ways that he could’ve gotten hurt in the seconds it took for him to get downstairs.

He’s still too annoyed at him to ask him to stay, so he asks why he came back instead.

“I can leave if I’m not welcome,” he says, as if Baz didn’t let him dismantle him yesterday morning, as if Baz isn’t risking everything for a moment of his time.

“That’s not what I meant,” he responds, and Simon frowns. 

It takes spite, takes something bordering on an argument for Baz to soften, to concede even a bit. He’s rewarded by the sight of Snow in one of his suits, then the softer whispers later when they find themselves tucked into Baz’s bedroom, sharing dinner after dinner.

It’s talk about past Christmases, and the current one. What they’ll do tomorrow, when they need to talk to the numpties. His mother. 

Safe talk, the kind that keeps them safely inside, away from a storm. 

Simon’s the wind, blowing the doors open when he says, “I’m not a very good boyfriend.” Baz’s mind floods immediately with sharp things to say, words covered in poison and thorns. Soft, desperate thoughts follow, but he can’t bring himself to lower his guard unless Simon brings it down by force. Not yet, not until he’s certain of him.

He plays it safe, lets Snow ramble on until it turns to sweet relief. To hearing him say it, out loud. _I like you_ , he says, _and I don’t even care that you don’t like me._

Baz figures that this is not the moment to tell him that he’s been in love with him since they were kids. He probably never will, if they even get to live long enough to spill truths like that. Simon goes on, and he disputes everything he says, even if weakly. Because he wants to know what will come of this, wants to hear him say it. 

He does. _"I want to be your boyfriend. Your terrible boyfriend."_

It’s something that Baz can’t understand, something that takes the hope in his chest and catalyzes it, makes it foam up and spill over. He doesn’t trust his voice when he’s looking Simon in the eyes, so he doesn’t speak at all.

Daphne brings food, and they eat. Baz can’t feign indifference anymore, can’t ignore Simon’s proposal earlier after he’s leaned in while Baz has his fangs popped, like an idiot. It means something that he can sit here, after everything, and eat on the floor. That he wants this. 

“You’re an idiot,” he says, meaning it entirely. “But you can have _this_. If you want it.”

And he means that more than anything else.

_**______________**_

He waits until Snow’s gone to sleep to go out and feed for the night. His skin still feels warm from where they’d fallen onto the carpet together after they finished eating, fingers intertwining between them. Hushed voices and the feeling of his skin, warm against his aching cold. Baz had to force himself to his own bed when Simon’s lips started to slow against his own, hands going slack as he fell asleep.

The forest isn’t ever still when he goes out. It’s always buzzing with life, stocked full of animals for him. Courtesy of Fiona, and his father’s insistence that he needs a source at home. But tonight, it’s eerily quiet, not even the sound of wind whistling through the tree branches to ease his discomfort. 

He’s about to head back inside after he feeds when he spots him, stepping out from the trees like a dream. At first, Baz thinks that’s what’s happening. That maybe he never got up from his bed, and now he’s dreaming of Simon when he first saw him, all those years ago. But the chill in the air is too sharp to be anything from sleep, and this Simon has some bright awareness in his eyes that his Simon never had. 

If he looks hard enough, he can see where the figure is transparent, as he walks towards him. 

_A visiting_. The thought urges him closer, even as his blood runs cold. He leans down, just in case it is. Simon – _a ghost?_ – puts a hand on Baz’s face.

“Simon?”

“Oh, you’ll do,” he grins.

Baz feels his entire body become hollow.

_**______________**_

He wonders how much longer he can feel like this before he dies. _Is this dying?_

He’s just fed but he feels empty, like he’s filled with a burning _nothing_. It pulls at him – at his skin and bones. At the magic that’s pouring from his body. He needs magic, needs _Simon_ to stop this horrible rawness under his skin, grating on him. And there he is, suddenly, squinting at himself as the younger him snaps off a tree branch. 

Baz realizes how wrong he’s gotten it. Realizes that he’s hungry, that he needs to stay far away from Simon so he doesn’t hurt him. But the animal instinct is there, forcing itself up and consuming him. He steps towards Simon, towards the younger him, and doubles over as he pushes more of that emptiness into him.

Snow looks pained, leaning towards him stupidly even as the younger one tells him that he’s doing exactly what he wants. Baz can’t help it – his body lunges forward without him realizing, and they’re on the ground, and he can feel Simon’s magic leaking off his body.

He can feel it all over him, all around them. And then, “You can have it.”

Relief, sweet and hot pours into him. Melting honey and sticky blood, _magic_. Smoke and fire – Simon and himself, tangled up on the floor. His mind pieces back together slowly, magic pouring into him, restoring clarity. It’s bordering on too much, like his nerves are being electrified, like he’s burning alive on the inside. 

Simon lets him go, eyes flaring with worry and apologies. Baz is spinning, delirious as he pulls Simon into his arms, his head falling onto Baz’s chest. His mind is still settling what happened, still feeling that fire inside of him. Simon’s asking him if he needs to hunt, still concerned, still sweet and sorry. Baz pulls himself off the floor, then offers his hand to Simon.

He takes it, eyes falling closed. Baz wraps him up in his arms again, gentle now.

“He used you against me,” he says, voice shaking. 

“Everyone does,” Baz responds. He means it; he hopes Simon knows what he means. 

_The Mage, Baz’s family, bloody Wellbelove. They all do, they always have._

Thinking of The Mage makes him think of the Humdrum, makes him think of Simon. Surely, they’re the same. And if Simon’s the Humdrum, then, he’s a villain. If Baz is a villain just for his family’s political position, and for his reluctant vampirism, then surely, Simon counts.

Doesn’t he?

The thought makes him snort, and then laugh. Simon’s pushing at him, trying to grab at his face, asking if he’s in shock. And then he tells him, and he’s almost angry in his response.

“I think I’d know if I were the Insidious Humdrum,” he says, and Baz laughs at that, loud and outright. 

“I wouldn’t give you that much credit, Simon,” he says, watching as his face lights up at hearing his name, “You’re exceedingly thick. And criminally good-looking – have I mentioned that?” 

He smiles then, and Baz can’t help but lean forward and kiss him. He pours everything he hasn’t said into it, all his fear and worry and love. Simon presses closer, and then away with a frown. He’s still confused – slow to catch on, as always – and Baz can’t even begin to explain what he can’t figure out yet, so he just laughs and lets his relief wash over him.

It’s turning him soft, knowing that he and Simon are the same mess. He's always known. It used to be a painful truth, back when he watched Simon falling apart. It's sweeter now, it's the thing that ties them together. It's something they can _fix_ together.

“And you like that?” he asks.

They walk back, hands brushing. Baz feels settled, ease poured over him. Because they match, because they’re the same disaster. Because he loves him, and that feeling might be mutual. 

It doesn’t last, though, and he should have known it wouldn’t have. Finding out that Simon is the biggest threat to magic, that the threat himself was standing in the forest only a few minutes ago, should have meant something. There’s no magic, not where they’re standing, and Baz can hear Daphne shrieking, can see her running towards them. 

The second his father wakes up, he’ll murder him. Baz’s fear spikes when he hears his father shout from somewhere inside.

“ _Go_ ,” he whispers, and he does. Baz tries to burn the look of Simon’s face out of his mind as Daphne falls to her knees in front of him, sobbing.

_**______________**_

It takes him forty minutes to get his father to stop cursing Simon’s name, and another ten to convince him not to go after him. 

“He’s gone, Father, and besides, he lost his magic here too. Why would he actively summon the Humdrum?”

“He’s the Mage’s puppet, Basil,” he shoots back, “Don’t tell me that this isn’t some scheme of his. It’s an act of war.”

That’s what he calls it, for every phone call with members of the Families.

_“He let the orphan play the part for Christmas, and now all the magic is gone. Our entire estate, can you believe it? It is, that’s exactly what I said._ War _, Mr. Weaver. You’re exactly right.”_

Baz can’t handle standing here on the side of the road while Daphne cries and his father scares the children with his whispery anger. He spells himself into the suit he wore for dinner last night while they’re all distracted, and then walks past them into the house to grab his keys. It’s morning already, and they can’t go back in because his father is worried that they’ll run dry.

Fuck standing there while his father curses out his terrible (lovely) boyfriend. He does enough of that himself.

He has plenty of time to think about it while he’s driving, ignoring his father shouting after him about the " _importance of family in these times_."

“What exactly was I contributing to you by standing there?”

“That’s not the point Basil, get out of the bloody c-”

He’d already started the engine though, and was winding down the driveway before his father could really stop him. And now he has time to figure out how to explain it. He’s got to get to Fiona’s first to get Bunce’s address – she’d know it, she’s got a list of the families that were raided by The Mage’s Men.

Walking into Bunce’s house and accusing Simon of being the Humdrum is a different thing than doing it while they’re alone together. But he has to. It’s the truth, and it’s necessary to move forward.

He thinks back to all their research, thinks back to the first time that Simon went off, when his magic rocketed across cities. It felt like an echo, like more magic than Baz had ever had in his life. And he thinks of every time he goes off, of how it feels the exact same way each time. His hands are clenched tight around the wheel as he pulls in, stepping out to meet her in the driveway. 

“I’ve noticed you like to dress up when you’re getting into trouble, Baz. Going dancing, as you like to call it?”

“I need Bunce’s address, Fiona.”

She narrows her eyes but holds out her hand for his mobile, plugging the location into GPS. 

“Your father called me,” she says.

“Don’t tell him where I’m at,” he replies, slipping into the driver’s seat smoothly. 

He repeats fact to himself to ease his nerves, to collect himself. His father’s throwing around words too carelessly for it to amount to nothing, surely, there will be something that comes of this.

Simon Snow is an orphan, is the boy from the prophecy that became Baz’s bedtime story. He’s The Chosen One, the savior of magic. He’s the greatest threat to magic too. He’s the first boy that Baz has ever loved, he’s the only boy that Baz will ever love. He’s a terrible boyfriend, he’s _his_ terrible boyfriend. 

None of that makes it easier to knock on the door, or to see Simon standing there next to Bunce.

_**______________**_

It’s on the table now, a simple explanation. Simon can’t wrap his head around it, slumps over on the wall like he can’t bear it. It makes it easier that Bunce knows where he’s going with it, that she’s just as smart and she’s already caught on. 

It makes it easier that the Humdrum himself told them what he was doing. Now that the answer’s there, all that’s left is to go back to the Numpties and find out who murdered his mother. 

He hasn’t forgotten. He couldn’t forget her when he wakes up every day smelling smoke, when he wakes up wrapped up in it. It’s in his clothes, in his hair. Being with Snow doesn’t change that. They have that agreement, truce until they avenge her. 

Everything’s so impossibly easy for a second, that he nearly forgets Simon. 

Simon, who has no father but sees the Mage as one. Simon who’s grown up as a pawn and influenced his entire life. Who’s just found out that he's ruining things, the way he always feels he does. Baz nearly forgot who cleans up his messes.

“We have to tell the Mage,” he says, blue eyes lit up like fire. 

Baz is blowing it out, blowing it in his stupid, stubborn face. 

_How could he? Not now, not him, of all people._

“We have an agreement,” he says, tugging the string to loyalty. But Baz should have known, he did know. Simon’s loyal, but he's already on one side. That fence rolls up between them again.

This is war. 

“There are more important things to worry about right now!” He shouts, when Baz gets sharp with him, when he slips back into his role on the opposite side. 

“Nothing is more important than my mother!” He yells back, flinching at Simon’s wide eyes filling with fierce tears. 

He leaves despite Penny's protests, because he knows that he’d never agree. 

He doesn't come back because he can’t bear to stand here and wish Simon would choose him for once.

_**______________**_

It’s quite alright. He knows how to swallow disappointment, uses it as determination to get through it. He’s scared – he can’t help it – to come back here. And for Simon, but he’s the hero. 

If only one of them is going to make it out alive, it’s going to be him. He lets the hope rinse away his fears that Simon won't make it out.

He’s in the den now, fire lit in his hand, as they crush around him. Large, loud rocks. How they’re sentient, and manage to stay alive at all, Baz doesn’t know. But he can’t focus on that while they’re moving closer, desperately. 

_It wouldn’t kill them to get too close to fire,_ he thinks bitterly. 

He asks questions and they answer, pouring so many words forward that he can’t think about anything anymore. He’s trying to decipher as they go, but they just keep closing in until the fire’s lost from his vision, and suddenly he can’t breathe.

A voice yells after him, shouting to cast. He doesn’t think before he does it, he can’t. A man hops on top of the rocks, slamming newspaper into them as they crumble to the floor. The fire in his hand is visible again, lighting up Nicodemus’s face. 

He listens to him for as long as he needs to figure everything out. He’s running then, but Nicodemus trails along, yelling about coming with him.

His mother, murdered by the Mage. He’d always suspected, always _known_ , somewhere in his head. He’s trying to wrap his head around it all and Nicodemus is just going on, something about how he’s got to get to his sister.

_Ebb_. 

Simon’s friend. The bloody goatherd that he spends most of his free time with. Baz has seen them together sometimes when he’s coming out of the Chapel, two dots on the horizon, surrounded by huge white goats. His blood runs cold when he hears that she’s been arrested. 

Snow adores her, and she’s harmless from what Baz has gathered – it’s why he doesn’t feed on the goats when he knows they’re the best option. _So why_? Dread sinks into his stomach.

His thoughts are careening out of focus when he hears a dog yapping his name at him. Bunce is frightfully good at odd spells – Baz has plans to ask her about possessions, if he makes it out of this alive. He spells the owner’s attention away and locks himself in his car, ignoring Nicodemus’s plea in favor of listening to Bunce talk through the dog. 

He’ll be damned if he ends up dying and the last thing that he does is bring a vampire into the school where his mother passed. 

_**______________**_

Bunce is silent except for when she’s spelling the car to go faster, even though Baz is already driving as fast as he can manage. 

He wants to know why Simon left her behind, but part of him is terrified it’s because he thinks he’s going to die, so he doesn’t ask. Just drives faster as she sits still in the seat, hands clenched tight in her lap.

He knows that she doesn’t trust him, that she won’t speak because she’s afraid she might turn it against them. That when he came by earlier, she couldn’t trust him until he mentioned the truce. He’s not as transparent as he thought then, not even now that he’s about to kill for him. He will, he _has_ to. Simon’s on his way to reason with his mother’s murderer, with the man who’s used him as a political pawn for years.

Someone who’s dragged him through hell and back to train him to be the perfect hero. And Baz knows, they _all_ know, that he can’t be the hero and the villain at the same time.

He thinks back to the prophecy – _and one will come to end us; and one will bring his fall._

He’s just hoping that the Mage doesn’t figure out that Simon’s both of them.

_**______________**_

The car gets stuck in the snow, and Bunce has the door open even before he gets his seat belt off. And then she’s running, hair swinging wildly behind her as her legs slip and sink in the snow. Wellbelove comes running out in the opposite direction, smelling like fire and blood. Like spent magic and incense, too. The Chapel. She’s telling them to run, and Penny’s begging her to help, but her legs won’t stop. 

“He wants Simon,” she says, and now Baz is desperate. They need her to point out where exactly, so they can get there faster, but she’s gone already, faster than she came. Penny’s running again, so he follows after her, spotting the smoke pouring from the Chapel windows. 

The smell of smoke is everywhere; Simon pouring out onto everything. Magic comes rolling over them, so much that Bunce stumbles. He feels like his throat is on fire, dizziness building in his skull, but he won’t stop. He looks over to ask her, but she’s resolute, throwing herself into it. By the time they’re inside the Chapel, she has to pause every few seconds to keep from keeling over.

All she can say is _Simon_.

When she points out an opening in the ceiling, bright and heavy with the smell of smoky magic, she can barely lift her wand to cast. 

“ _On love’s light wings!_ ” He shouts, wrapping an arm around her middle to pull her up with him. It works to lift them up, flawlessly. He doesn’t have the time to think about it anymore, not when Simon’s holding onto the Humdrum in the middle of the room, red wings spread out wide behind him. He’s got that look on his face that he gets when he’s angry, except there’s something different about his eyes now. 

They’re clear – nearly white. The Mage is pulling at him, but his hands are sliding right off. Like he’s finally shielding himself from his magic instead of everyone else in the room. 

“What’s he doing?” Penny asks between gasps of breath. She’s thrown up, but Baz could barely hear it over the roaring noise in the room. 

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly, watching as the figure fades in front of him. Everything’s slowly fading out – the light, the dark, the noise. 

For a second, it’s the victory of a hero, come to life. The Humdrum is gone, maybe for good, and Simon’s standing there, still glowing. 

But then he falls into the light, onto broken glass on the floor, and doesn’t move. 

_**______________**_

Everything is white. He can see Simon on the floor, but nothing around him. His chest feels like it’s splitting open. Raw, empty. It’s so familiar for a second – to just see Simon when the world’s falling apart around them – but the sight of him unmoving sends a wave of grief roiling over him. 

For the first time since his mother’s death, he presses his hands to the floor and _sobs_. He hears someone repeating “ _no_ ” over and over, but he’s not sure if it’s Bunce or the Mage. Or himself. 

The Mage is lying on top of him, scrabbling at his wings and yelling at him. The only sound in the room is screaming, is glass crunching and the sound of Simon’s slow heartbeat, rising above everything. 

And then Simon swings him arm up slowly, and Baz’s chest splinters open as he lunges towards them. 

The second he sees him move, he’s there, pulling him off of Simon and away. He’s so thirsty, and it’s so easy – he’s already got his fangs out. But then Simon whispers, _no_ , and his hesitation gives the Mage the chance to get his wand out. Simon grabs it, pointing it at his own heart, and Baz’s stomach flips.

There’s too much movement, too many voices, not enough light. And he still feels like he’s breaking in half every time he sees flashes of Simon. There’s tiny pieces of glass still littered throughout his skin, in his hair. He’s got blood on him, and tears, but the worst part is his eyes. 

They’re blue again, the same shade they’ve always been. They lock eyes as Penny casts something, as Simon says, “ _Stop it, stop hurting me_!” and he feels his eyes well up with tears. 

Simon’s eyes are blue, and plain.

But there’s so much hurt in them that Baz wants to grab him and hold him until that look burns away, until he’s whole again. The Mage slumps back against Baz’s chest, and Simon’s eyes go wide as Baz lets him drop to the floor. 

Simon’s yelling incomprehensibly now, words upon words, getting caught in his throat. Questions they can’t answer, that no one understands right now. 

“He’s dead. The Mage is dead.” 

Baz only stops himself from saying “thank Crowley,” out loud because Simon’s inconsolable. 

_**______________**_

They sit in silence until Simon calms down enough to try and put his jacket over the Mage’s corpse, and then he starts crying again. 

This time, he reaches for Baz when he opens his arms to hold him. 

He whispers to him at first, things that only he can hear. 

“You’re so brave, love. So strong.”

Simon clenches his fingers tighter in Baz’s shirt and turns his face into his chest, stifling his sobs.

“I’m so proud of you.” 

Simon’s whispering apologies against Baz’s chest. He can make out the trace of _sorry_ on his skin through his clothes. His heart breaks, over and over again, for the boy in his arms. His heart’s been breaking for him for years – since he first heard Simon crying through the door in their first year, since he saw him falling apart, over and over again. 

He gives him sweet things instead, tries to calm him down. 

He thinks that maybe Penelope’s staring at them, but it's all in his periphery. 

_**______________**_

Everything after feels like a nightmare. He ends up feeding on the birds around them, because he’s not about to sink his teeth into the Mage – he’d end up like Nicodemus if anyone found a mark on his neck.

Simon’s silent and his eyes haven’t closed since he woke up, even though he must be exhausted. He sits, clinging to Baz’s arm and accepting whatever is given to him.

But he has to go home, eventually. He’s scared to leave Simon alone, but Penny wraps him up in her arms as soon as Baz steps away. And time passes, and he’s more fine than he thought he’d be. He goes back to school, even as Penelope says she can’t stand it. It’s fine. He always knew he’d be top of the class, though he feels slightly bad about how it happened. 

Telling Simon not to come to the ceremony today makes him feel bleak, but he’d rather preserve his feelings. It’s been difficult, no matter what Baz does. He always feels like he’s treading water, like he’s trying not to shatter ice. It’s not something he’s familiar with – he’s never felt like he had to take care of Simon. But he’s softer now, more fragile. He gets frustrated easier, and a lot more tired. 

And he still has wings (and the tail.)

He holds Baz’s hand tightly, for hours at a time. Sometimes, his hand goes numb. He wouldn’t dare complain, it’s his grounding point, in the moments when Simon’s not around.  
Like now, during his speech. He takes care to mention his mother, and to thank the teachers that supported him. His family. 

He doesn’t mention the Mage. Not at all. 

After, he has his last chance to go down to the Catacombs, say goodbye to his mother for the last time. 

It’s familiar. Except for the fact that he’ll never do it again, and knowing he’ll never be back makes his chest feel heavy. His head falls back against the stone behind him, and he just breathes in the silence, hoping maybe, to hear her. 

To know that he’s right, for not apologizing this time.

Nothing comes, so he stands. Then pauses, only for a moment, and walks out.

_**______________**_

He’s only been standing at the ball for a few minutes, but it’s awfully bleak. He’s about to call Fiona to take her up on the drinks offer when he hears someone talking behind him.   
Simon Snow. A rare sight, in a suit, with his hair parted and all. His grin is just as wide as it used to be, but it’s unnerving without the glint in his eyes. That faded out with the magic. 

He doesn’t smell much like smoke anymore, but that’s quite alright. He’s cinnamon now, sweet and soft. He has a habit of blending in without all that bright magic blasting from him.

That’s all right. He’s here, isn’t he? 

He’s grown to use more of Baz’s drier humor, but it falls flat now that he’s not the same as he was. He’s quieter now. A lot more still, like he doesn’t have much energy to move around anymore. 

And something’s changed in his face. Something’s shifted, gone hollow. Baz can’t tell what. He can’t tell if it’s going to be a problem just yet, or if he's settling. He's never gone this blank before.

Everyone’s headed out to dance, so that’s where they’re going. He knows Simon can’t dance; he’s watched him at every ball they’ve been to since they were third years.

_Absolutely hopeless_. He’s got his limbs all tense, even now that Baz has him in position, and all they’re doing is swaying but he still looks pained every time they switch directions.  
He’s starting to think it’s not the dancing though. Their conversation is small, isn’t leading to an argument, so Baz lets himself smile. It’s reassurance he didn’t know that he needed, to hear him say it out loud that he didn’t care what people thought about them.

Dating Simon Snow feels a lot less like the butterflies and excitement he expected. Dating him feels more like sinking into bed after a long day, like sitting in the shade when he thought he was never going to stop burning up in the sun. 

Relief. Sweet, warm. Cinnamon. He supposes that relief is safer than the alternative. 

He _likes_ it; he _loves_ him. It’s more than he ever thought he’d have.

They sway in silence for a bit, and Baz is about to rest his head on Simon’s when he sees his jaw working, back and forth, like he’s got something to say. He’s about to ask him what’s wrong when he catches the blur of motion, Simon’s head swinging up and barely missing Baz’s nose. 

His hands squeeze as his face goes red. Blustering is something he hasn't outgrown, not even after losing his magic. “Use your words, Simon,” Baz says, because he hasn’t quite outgrown his penchant for cruelty. Simon hates being told that, but he hopes that it’s more reassuring now than anything. He hasn’t figured out any other alternative.

He’s going on now, and can’t stop. Tail slicing through the air, slipping out of Baz’s hands where it was wrapped around his knuckles. About how he isn’t real, how he’s not a real mage and never has been. Baz can’t stand to hear him pin all of his self worth on his magic, has always hated that he valued himself only because of his power. 

The people that are dead and gone did that to him. There are some ghosts that’ll continue to haunt him, even if they're not around anymore.

It’s an argument now – Simon’s angry at himself and Baz is angry at that. 

“Why are you saying all this?” He asks, stepping back from him. Simon folds in on himself, now. It breaks Baz’s heart that he doesn’t stand tall anymore in a fight, that he cowers and holds his arms close to his body like he’s scared. 

Because he used to be invincible, and now he’s so human that is scares him. 

“Because I’m tired of _waiting_ ,” he says. And Baz understands now, as he lets him continue. 

“I don’t belong with you anymore.”

Baz reaches for him again, pulling him closer. To prove the point, as he says it. _The Crucible_ , he says. Because when he’d lost his mother and became his father to escape his grief, he lost his soul too. Because in the end, Simon was his focal point, the sunbeam to clutch onto in the dark. Even if the hope burned where he held on.

He’s trying to explain that now, to get him to see that he likes not feeling like he’s burning up anymore. Simon won’t understand it now, but he doesn’t need to yet.

He’ll learn that Baz loves him, that he’s always loved him, unconditionally. 

  
That he wakes up every day and chooses Simon, because he _wants_ to. Not despite everything, but _because_ of it.

“I choose you. Simon Snow, I choose you.”

Baz can see the instant his words soak in. It’s the closest to _I love you_ that he’s managed, and he can see the very second that it registers, the way that Simon finally softens.

When he kisses him, solid and sure, he knows what it means. It’s a promise.

_I choose you_ , he’s saying, even if he can’t say it out loud just yet. 

It’s more than enough.

**Author's Note:**

> i am aware that this is basically 'carry on.' 
> 
> it's just more angsty, a lil more elaboration on my interpretation
> 
> thus, this was born.
> 
> thank y'all for reading, and as always kudos, comments, n' all that is appreciated !
> 
> also thank you to my cousin lauren, for responding extremely quickly when i asked her for a rich, powerful man's last name and she gave me "mr. weaver"


End file.
